NCERT Solutions Class 8 Social Science Chapter 8 World Geography Some Glimpses

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CLASS 8 · SOCIAL SCIENCE

NCERT Solutions

Chapter 8: World Geography:
Some Glimpses

NCERT Textbook — Exploring Society: India And Beyond

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 8 World Geography: Some Glimpses AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

CLASS 8 · SOCIAL SCIENCE · EXPLORING SOCIETY: INDIA AND BEYOND

NCERT Solutions — Chapter 8: World Geography: Some
Glimpses
The opening chapter of Part 2 takes you on a whirlwind tour of the ‘blue planet’ — first the problem of
drawing a round Earth on flat paper, then the oceans that cover 71 per cent of its surface, and then one or two
great landforms on every continent, from the Tibetan Plateau to the Great Australian Desert.

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Exploring Society: India and Beyond (Class 8) Part II, 1 – 34

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The Big Questions — Page 1
Chapter opener

THE BIG QUESTIONS

Q1 What are the unique physical features of the continents?

Every continent carries at least one landform that exists nowhere else on the same scale. The
chapter picks out these:

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 8 World Geography: Some Glimpses AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

CONTINENT THE FEATURES THE WHAT MAKES THEM UNIQUE
CHAPTER VISITS

Asia Tibetan Plateau, Gobi The Tibetan Plateau is the highest and largest plateau
Desert, Eurasian Steppes, on Earth — about 2,500 km east to west, 1,000 km
Siberian Taiga, Ural north to south, averaging over 4,500 m. The Steppes
Mountains run over 8,000 km west to east.

Europe European Plain, the Alps The European Plain is one of the largest flat lands in
the world; the Alps are a 1,200 km crescent-shaped
range holding Mont Blanc.

Africa Sahara Desert, African The Sahara is the largest hot desert in the world (30°C
savannah, River Nile to 46°C, rainfall below 25 cm); the Nile, almost 6,650
km, is the longest river in the world.

South America Andes Mountains, Amazon Mount Aconcagua is the highest peak in the Western
River and Rainforest, Hemisphere; the Uyuni Salt Flats are the largest salt
Atacama Desert flat on Earth; the Amazon is the world’s largest river
by volume; the Atacama is one of the driest places on
Earth.

North America Colorado Plateau and Grand The Rockies stretch over 4,800 km; the Appalachians
Canyon, Rocky Mountains, are among the oldest ranges in the world; the Great
Appalachian Mountains, Lakes are a chain of five massive freshwater lakes.
Great Lakes

Australia Great Australian Desert A whole continent whose interior is arid, fringed by
(including the Great Victoria the largest coral reef structure on Earth.
Desert), Great Barrier Reef

Antarctica The polar ice continent The largest desert on Earth — over 14 million square
kilometres, more than four times the area of India —
and the coldest.

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 8 World Geography: Some Glimpses AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Why it happens: these features are not scattered at random. Three forces put them
where they are.

Where plates collide, land is pushed up. The Indo-Australian plate driving into
the Eurasian plate raised both the Himalaya and the Tibetan Plateau behind it.
The Andes stand along the western edge of South America for the same reason.
Old ranges that stopped growing long ago — the Urals, the Appalachians — have
been worn down by erosion and are therefore low and rounded, not sharp and
snow-capped.
Where air sinks, deserts form. Air heated at the Equator rises, drops its rain
there (the Amazon and Congo rainforests), then travels away from the Equator
and sinks back near the Tropics. Sinking air warms up and cannot form clouds —
so the Sahara, the Arabian and Thar deserts, the Kalahari and the Australian
interior all sit in the same two belts, north and south.
Where mountains or distance block the sea, deserts also form. The Gobi lies
deep inside Asia, too far from any ocean for moist winds to reach; the Atacama is
squeezed between the Andes and a cold ocean current. Between the rainforest
belt and the desert belt lies the in-between land — the African savannah, with its
distinct wet and dry seasons.

Warm, moist air rises
and pours out its rain
dry air sinks, dry air sinks,
warms, no clouds warms, no clouds

Kalahari, Australian rainforest belt Sahara, Arabian, Thar

about 30° S Equator about 30° N
The world’s great hot deserts lie in two belts, one on each side of the Equator.

Why the Sahara, the Arabian, the Thar, the Kalahari and the Australian deserts all sit at roughly the
same distance from the Equator.

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 8 World Geography: Some Glimpses AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

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Why do we need to understand world geography?
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The Earth is one connected system.
Amazon, carrying the phosphorus its plants need. The Gulf Stream carries warm water from

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near the Equator to Western Europe, which is why the United Kingdom is warmer than other
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places at the same latitude. You cannot explain either place without the other.
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a glafrom Mumbai to London; bays shelter our ports from the open ocean’s winds. The price of
goods in an Indian market still depends on such passages staying open.

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Environmental problems ignore borders. Melting permafrost in the far north releases

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carbon dioxide and methane that warm the whole planet. Cheap clothes discarded in rich

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countries end up as a mountain of waste in the Atacama. Reef bleaching off Australia is
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caused by changes in ocean water that no single country produced.
Wise management needs knowledge first. As the chapter’s closing bullet puts it, studying

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world geography helps us understand these features and the need to manage them wisely

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for sustainable development. You cannot protect a mountain, a reef or
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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 8 World Geography: Some Glimpses AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

HUMAN ACTION WHAT IT TRIGGERS WHERE IN
THE CHAPTER

Burning fuels and polluting the sea, Coral bleaching — the coral dies and a whole host Fig. 1.9, p. 8
changing the chemical composition of of sea animals lose their habitat
ocean waters

Overfishing and pollution near reefs Loss of the ‘rainforests of the sea’ that shelter about p. 7
one-quarter of all ocean species

Deforestation of the Amazon for land Loss of the largest rainforest, of the communities in pp. 24, 31
and development it, and of the carbon it stores

Global warming caused by Permafrost melts and releases the carbon dioxide p. 16
greenhouse gases and methane it had trapped — which warms the
planet further

Agricultural run-off and industrial Chemical contamination of the sediments and water p. 29
processes of the Great Lakes

Cheap fast fashion discarded when One of the world’s fastest-growing clothing dumps p. 25
trends change in the Atacama — called by the UN ‘an
environmental and social emergency’

Overgrazing by elk after their Ecological imbalance in Yellowstone — corrected p. 28
predators were gone only when wolves were reintroduced in 1995

Why it happens: in nature everything is linked, so a push in one place travels.
Remove the wolf and the elk multiply; the elk eat the young plants; the plants
disappear and with them the soil and the birds. The permafrost example is the most
serious kind of link, a feedback loop: warming melts the frozen soil, the melting soil
releases gases, and those gases cause more warming. Once such a loop starts, it
keeps itself going even if we stop the original push — which is why acting early costs
far less than repairing later.

Tip: The Yellowstone story is the hopeful half of the answer. Damage caused by
human action can sometimes be undone by human action, if we act on the
ecosystem rather than on one animal at a time.

LET’S EXPLORE — Page 2

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 8 World Geography: Some Glimpses AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

The Complexity of Mapping the Earth

LET’S EXPLORE

Q1 What do you think each of the different colours in the map in Fig. 1.1 represents?

Fig. 1.1 is a physical map, so its colours stand for kinds of land and water, not for countries.
Reading it against the key the book gives just below:

COLOUR WHAT IT SHOWS WHERE YOU CAN SEE IT IN FIG. 1.1

Blue Water bodies — oceans, The deep blue that surrounds every landmass; the paler blue of
seas, lakes, rivers shallow shelves near coasts

Green Plains The Amazon and Congo basins, the European Plain, eastern
North America, the belt across northern Asia

Yellow / Plateaus The interior of southern Africa, the Deccan in India, the higher
brown ground of central Asia

Dark brown High mountains The chain running down the western edge of the Americas (the
Andes and Rockies), and the belt across southern Asia

Light yellow Deserts The broad pale band of the Sahara and Arabia, the Thar, the
red-tan interior of Australia

White Ice and glaciers Greenland at the top left, Antarctica along the bottom, the snow
of the highest ranges

Why it happens: a physical map colours the world by height and cover, so the
colours line up into patterns you can explain. The pale desert band runs across
North Africa and Arabia at roughly the same distance from the Equator on both
sides, because dry air sinks there. The green belt sits along the Equator and again
across the cool, well-watered north. The white is only at the poles and on the highest
ground, because those are the two places cold enough to hold ice all year. Once you
know the key, a physical map is not a picture — it is a set of statements about
climate and relief.

Check it yourself: Fig. 1.1 was ‘stitched together’ by NASA scientists from minute
data collected over several years — so these are not painted colours but the Earth’s
own surface, averaged over time.

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 8 World Geography: Some Glimpses AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

THINK ABOUT IT — Page 4
The Blue of the Blue Planet, the Oceans

THINK ABOUT IT

Q1 Oceans give us almost half the oxygen we breathe. Tiny marine organisms, such as
plankton, make this possible. What do you think would happen to all living beings if
pollution harmed these planktons, and they could no longer produce enough
oxygen?

Life on land and in the sea would be hit twice over — once through the air, and once through
food.

Less oxygen in the air and in the water. Plankton have chlorophyll and use sunlight and
carbon dioxide to make food, releasing oxygen as they do. If they die back, roughly half the
world’s oxygen supply weakens. Fish and other sea animals, which breathe oxygen dissolved
in water, would suffer first and fastest, because the water around them loses its oxygen long
before the atmosphere does.
The whole ocean food chain collapses from the bottom. Plankton are the first link —
small fish eat them, larger fish eat the small fish, and the largest mammal in the world, the
blue whale, feeds on plankton directly. Break the first link and every link above it starves.
Reefs, already under stress, would lose the fish that live in them.
More carbon dioxide stays in the air. Every plankton that is not there is carbon dioxide that
is not taken out of the water and the air. Warming would speed up, which in turn warms the
ocean and harms the surviving plankton further.
People lose food and livelihood. Fishing communities along the Indian coast, in the Bay of
Bengal and everywhere else depend on those fish. Coastal towns would lose their catch,
their trade and their work.

Why it happens: the danger is not that plankton are important animals — it is that
they are the base of two systems at once, the oxygen system and the food system. A
living system can usually survive losing something at the top, because the layers
below reorganise. It cannot survive losing the bottom, because there is nothing
below to replace it. That is why pollution that seems to harm only ‘tiny organisms
nobody sees’ is among the most dangerous kinds.

Tip: Plankton are harmed by exactly the wastes we control — sewage, farm
chemicals washed into rivers, oil spills and plastics that block sunlight. Protecting
them starts on land, not at sea.

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 8 World Geography: Some Glimpses AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

LET’S EXPLORE — Page 11
Asia

LET’S EXPLORE

Q1 Study the map in Fig.1.11. What are the different physical features represented
here? (Hint: You may refer to LET’S EXPLORE on page 2 of this chapter.)

Reading Fig. 1.11 with the colour key from page 2, the map of Asia shows five kinds of physical
feature, four of them named on the map itself:

WHAT YOU SEE COLOUR ON THE THE FEATURE
MAP

The whole surround, and the deep Blue, darkening where Oceans and seas — the Pacific Ocean is
water off the east coast the sea is deepest labelled on the right, the Arctic across the
top

A broad green band across the Dark green Cold northern plains under coniferous forest
north, labelled Siberian Taiga

A green belt across the middle, Lighter green Flat, unforested temperate grassland
labelled Eurasian Steppes

A pale patch in the interior, labelled Light yellow / tan Desert — dry land with very low rainfall
Gobi Desert

A narrow ridge running north– Brown, with white on An old mountain range, the natural
south, labelled Ural Mountains the highest parts boundary between Europe and Asia

A high pale-and-white block in the White (ice and snow) The highest and largest plateau on Earth,
south, labelled Tibetan Plateau with brown around it with the Himalaya on its southern edge

The map also carries a compass rose and a scale bar reading 0 – 2,000 – 4,000 km, so you can
judge how huge these features are: the Steppes alone run over 8,000 km from west to east.

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 8 World Geography: Some Glimpses AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

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In-text Questions — Page 12
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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 8 World Geography: Some Glimpses AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Why it happens: the two changes are one change. As the climate warms, the snow
and ice that used to sit on the plateau all year melt away — that is the vanished
white. The meltwater has to go somewhere, and the Tibetan Plateau is a high basin
with very little drainage out to the sea, so the water simply collects in the hollows
already holding lakes. The lakes rise, spill sideways and merge. The chapter states it
plainly: with climate change, snow-melt has led to the expansion of existing lakes
and the creation of new ones.

Did you know? This matters far beyond Tibet. The plateau is called the ‘Third Pole’
because it holds the largest reserves of freshwater outside the polar regions, and it
feeds the Indus, the Brahmaputra and the Yangtze. Ice released as lake water is
water no longer stored for the dry season, on which hundreds of millions of people
downstream depend.

LET’S EXPLORE — Page 15
The Urals

LET’S EXPLORE

Q1 Assess and describe the Himalayas from the perspective of these different roles.

The chapter lists four roles that mountains play: they determine climates, they act as ‘water
towers’, they are biodiversity hotspots, and they often serve as natural boundaries. The
Himalaya fill all four, and more strongly than almost any other range on Earth.

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 8 World Geography: Some Glimpses AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

ROLE THE HIMALAYA IN THAT ROLE

Determining They do two opposite jobs at once. In winter they stand across the path of the bitterly cold winds
climate coming down from Central Asia, so northern India stays far warmer than other lands at the same
latitude. In summer they force the moist south-west monsoon winds to climb; rising air cools, and
the rain falls on their southern slopes. Without the Himalaya, India would have neither its mild
winters nor its heavy monsoon.

Water towers Because they are high, they store winter precipitation as snow and ice and release it slowly as it
melts. That is why the Ganga, the Yamuna, the Indus and the Brahmaputra keep flowing even in
the dry months before the monsoon breaks, while purely rain-fed peninsular rivers shrink.
Hundreds of millions of people in the plains drink and farm on this stored water.

Biodiversity Height changes very fast over a short horizontal distance, so many climate belts are stacked one
hotspot above the other — hot, wet foothill forest at the bottom, then temperate oak and pine, then fir and
birch, then alpine meadow, then bare rock, snow and cold desert. Each belt has its own plants and
animals, from elephants and rhinos in the Terai to the snow leopard, the Himalayan monal and
the red panda higher up. A single day’s climb passes through what would otherwise take a
journey of thousands of kilometres.

Natural They form India’s northern wall, marking the borders with Nepal, Bhutan and the Tibetan region
boundary of China. Historically they were so hard to cross that most invasions into India came instead
through the passes of the north-west. The range has shaped the map of nations as firmly as any
treaty.

Why it happens: all four roles come from a single fact — the Himalaya are young
and very high, thrown up by the still-continuing collision of the Indo-Australian and
Eurasian plates. Height is what blocks the wind, height is what freezes water into
storage, height is what stacks the climate belts, and height is what makes a barrier.
Compare them with the Urals, which are just as long but ancient and worn down: the
Urals divide two continents on the map but stop no wind and store no glaciers.

Tip: When a question asks you to ‘assess from the perspective of different roles’,
answer role by role, and give one concrete example under each. That is far stronger
than a single paragraph of praise.

LET’S EXPLORE — Page 18

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 8 World Geography: Some Glimpses AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Europe — The European Plain

LET’S EXPLORE

Q1 Observe the area covered by the European Plain. Now turn to the political map of
the world at the end of this textbook. List the countries that are part of the
European Plain (you need not memorise them).

On Fig. 1.19 the label EUROPEAN PLAIN sweeps in a curve from the North Sea coast in the west
right across to the Ural Mountains in the east, widening as it goes. Matching that green belt
against the political map gives, from west to east:

PART OF THE COUNTRIES IT CROSSES
PLAIN

Western end, along Northern France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark
the North Sea

Central section, along Northern Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia
the Baltic

Eastern section, the Belarus, Ukraine, and above all western Russia, right up to the Urals; the plain fades into
widest part the dry lands of northern Kazakhstan near the Caspian Sea

Your list may differ a little at the edges — a plain has no sharp border, and the map’s green
shades into brown gradually. Any list with the countries above at its core is correct.

Why it happens: the plain is one continuous low, flat surface built up by sediment
deposition over a very long time, so it pays no attention to national borders — it
simply runs on until higher ground stops it. Look at what stops it on Fig. 1.19: the
Alps and the Carpathians to the south, the Urals to the east, and the sea to the north
and west. That is why the plain is broadly triangular, narrow in the west and very
wide in the east.

Did you know? Because it is flat, fertile and open, the same plain that grows
Europe’s wheat, barley, rye and potatoes and carries its rivers and railways has also
been the ground for major battles, with many rulers jostling to control it. Flat land is
easy to farm — and easy to march an army across.

LET’S EXPLORE — Page 22

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 8 World Geography: Some Glimpses AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Africa

LET’S EXPLORE

Q1 On the map (Fig. 1.22) locate the course of the River Nile. Where does it originate
from and in which direction does it flow? Turn to the political map at the end of the
book, and identify some of the areas that the river flows through.

Origin. On Fig. 1.22 the blue line of the Nile begins in the lake country of eastern Africa, at the
point where Uganda and Tanzania are marked — the great lakes of the East African highlands.
Direction. It flows almost due north, from the highlands near the Equator to the Mediterranean
Sea, where it ends in a delta on the coast of Egypt.
Areas it flows through, read off the map and checked against the political map at the end of
the book: the Uganda–Tanzania lake region → South Sudan → Sudan → Egypt → the
Mediterranean Sea.

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 8 World Geography: Some Glimpses AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 8 World Geography: Some Glimpses AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

LET’S EXPLORE — Page 24
South America — the Amazon

LET’S EXPLORE

Q1 The Amazon Rainforest has been called the ‘Lungs of the Earth’. Why do you think
this might be so?

Because it does, on an enormous scale, exactly what lungs do — it exchanges gases with the air
around it.

It is a forest of tall, mostly evergreen trees fed by a very high amount of rainfall, so its leaves
are green and working all year, never dropping into a leafless season. Hour after hour those
leaves take in carbon dioxide and give out oxygen.
It is the largest such forest on Earth, supported by the basin of the Amazon — the world’s
largest river by volume — and all its tributaries. Scale is the whole point of the name: no
other single forest handles so much of the air.
The carbon it takes in is not simply released again; it is locked up in enormous trunks, roots
and soil. A forest that is cut or burnt gives all of that back to the air at once.

Why it happens: the phrase is a comparison, and like all comparisons it is worth
testing. Scientists point out that a mature rainforest also consumes much of the
oxygen it makes, as fallen leaves and wood rot; so it is not literally topping up the
world’s oxygen the way a pair of lungs supplies a body. What it genuinely does is just
as important: it stores a vast amount of carbon, and it recycles moisture — water
drawn up by roots is breathed out by the leaves, forms cloud, and falls again as rain
over the basin and far beyond it. Calling it the lungs of the Earth is a fair way of
saying that this one forest helps regulate the air and the rainfall of the whole planet.

Did you know? The Amazon does not stand alone. Dust blown across the ocean
from the Sahara reaches the rainforest carrying phosphorus, a nutrient its plants
need. The world’s greatest desert helps feed the world’s greatest forest.

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 8 World Geography: Some Glimpses AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Q2 The countries in this region need land for development but risk losing the Amazon
Rainforest. Discuss in groups: What are the short and long-term effects of
deforestation, and how can we protect the Amazon for the planet?

This is a group discussion, so plan it before you argue it. A good discussion here needs three
things: an honest statement of why the land is wanted, a separation of short-term from long-
term effects, and solutions that answer the need rather than ignore it.
Method for the group. Split into two halves. One half argues the case of a farming family or a
state government that needs land, roads and jobs now; the other argues the case of the forest
and the people in it. Then come together and try to find a solution both halves can live with.
Note down the points on which you could not agree — those are the real problem.

EFFECTS OF CLEARING THE FOREST

Short term Land is gained for farms, cattle, mines and roads, and money and jobs come in. But the forest’s
(a few years) own people — almost 400 indigenous communities live there — lose their homes and their
livelihood; wildlife loses its habitat; the exposed soil, which is thin under a rainforest, is washed
away by heavy rain; and burning the felled trees releases smoke and carbon dioxide at once.

Long term The cleared soil loses its fertility within a few years, so the same farmers must clear more forest —
(decades) the gain does not last. With fewer trees breathing out moisture, less rain falls, and the surviving
forest dries and burns more easily. Species found nowhere else are lost for good. The carbon
released adds to global warming, which harms the very countries that cleared the land.

How the Amazon can be protected — ideas the group can defend:

Secure the rights of the forest communities. The chapter notes that these almost 400
communities play an important role in conserving the forest. Land in their legal control is far
less likely to be cleared.
Develop without clearing. Fruit, nuts, rubber, fish, medicine and carefully managed tourism
earn money from a standing forest; cattle pasture earns money only from a felled one.
Enforce protected areas and monitor from satellites, exactly as the change on the Tibetan
Plateau in Fig. 1.12 was spotted — illegal clearing can now be seen within days.
Share the cost internationally. If the forest benefits the whole planet, the whole planet
should help pay for keeping it, so that the burden does not fall only on the poorer countries
that happen to own it.
Restore what is already lost. Yellowstone (p. 28) shows that a damaged ecosystem can
recover when the right action is taken.

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 8 World Geography: Some Glimpses AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Sample answer: ‘Clearing the Amazon looks like development, but it is development
that eats itself. The soil under a rainforest is thin, so a cleared field is fertile for only a
few seasons and the farmer must clear again. Within a generation the country has
lost its forest and still has poor farmland. We would argue instead for development
that needs the forest alive — Brazil nuts, rubber, fish, medicines and tourism —
together with legal land rights for the almost 400 indigenous communities who
already protect it, satellite monitoring of illegal clearing, and international funding,
since the rest of the world benefits from the carbon this forest stores.’

In-text Questions — Page 29
The Australian Continent (Fig. 1.34)

Q1 Physical map of Australia. Based on the colours you see, what conclusions can you
draw about the landforms?

Using the colour key from page 2, Fig. 1.34 tells a clear story about the continent.

A vast dry interior. Almost the whole middle of the continent is red, orange and pale tan —
the colours of desert and bare, arid ground, and it is labelled the GREAT AUSTRALIAN
DESERT. Since this covers most of the map’s land area, a large part of Australia must be
desert or arid.
A thin green rim. Green appears only as a narrow strip along the east coast, and in smaller
patches in the south-west and south-east corners. So the well-watered plains, forests and
farmland — and therefore most of the people — are squeezed against the coasts.
Higher land near the east coast. Along the eastern edge the green darkens into a brown,
ridged strip running north to south, which marks land standing higher than the plains
around it.
No white anywhere. There is no ice or permanent snow on the map, so Australia has no
mountains high enough or latitudes cold enough to hold them — it is the flattest and lowest
of the inhabited continents.
Shallow warm water in the north-east. Off the north-eastern coast the blue is paler, and
the Great Barrier Reef is labelled along it — shallow, warm, sunlit water is exactly where
corals can build.

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 8 World Geography: Some Glimpses AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Why it happens: the two patterns — dry middle, green rim — have the same cause.
The higher land along the east coast stands in the way of the moist winds blowing in
from the sea. The air is forced to rise, cools and drops its rain on the seaward side,
which is why that strip is green; by the time the air crosses the ridge it has little
moisture left, so the interior lies in a rain shadow. On top of that, Australia straddles
the Tropic of Capricorn, one of the two belts where dry air sinks and clouds rarely
form. A continent that is both tropic-straddling and cut off from the sea winds can
hardly be anything but desert in the middle.

Did you know? The chapter’s DON’T MISS OUT on page 30 warns against assuming
‘desert’ means hot. The largest desert on Earth is Antarctica — over 14 million square
kilometres, more than four times the area of India — and it is the coldest desert of
all. What defines a desert is how little precipitation it gets, not how warm it is.

Questions and activities — Pages 31–32
End of chapter

QUESTIONS AND ACTIVITIES

Q1 Why do all map projections have some amount of distortion?

Because the Earth is an oblate spheroid — a curved surface — and a curved surface cannot be
flattened without being stretched, squeezed or torn.
The chapter gives you the test yourself: peel an orange and try to lay the peel flat without
tearing it. It cannot be done. Gaps open up, and to close them you must stretch the peel. That
stretching is the distortion on every world map ever drawn.

Page 18 of 34

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 8 World Geography: Some Glimpses AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Q2 What makes the Tibetan Plateau unique?

It is the highest and largest plateau on Earth — no other plateau combines that height with that
size.

Size and height. It stretches about 2,500 km from east to west and 1,000 km from north to
south, with an average height of over 4,500 metres above sea level. Not a peak, but a whole
flat land held up higher than most mountains.
How it was formed. It is the result of the collision between the Indo-Australian and Eurasian
tectonic plates — the same collision that raised the Himalayan range on its southern rim.
The plateau sits immediately north of that range.
Its effect on climate. This enormous block of high ground plays an important role in
influencing the climate of Asia.
Its rivers. It is the source of many major rivers, including the Indus, the Brahmaputra and
the Yangtze.
The ‘Third Pole’. Scientists give the plateau and its mountains this name because it contains
the largest reserves of freshwater outside the polar regions.
A place where change is visible. With climate change, snow-melt has led to the expansion
of existing lakes and the creation of new ones — the difference you can see between the
1987 and 2021 satellite pictures in Fig. 1.12.

Why it happens: its uniqueness follows from one fact — its height over a huge
area. Height is why it is cold enough to hold ice at latitudes where India is tropical,
which is why it stores freshwater and earns the name Third Pole. Height is why the
great rivers of Asia begin there rather than end there. And height over an area of
millions of square kilometres is why it can heat and cool enough air to affect the
climate of a whole continent, instead of just its own valley.

Q3 Why are coral reefs called the ‘rainforests of the sea’?

Because, like a rainforest, a reef packs an extraordinary amount of life into a very small space.
Reefs are among the most diverse ecosystems on Earth, providing food and shelter for about
one-quarter of all ocean species — fish, crabs, turtles and sponges among them — although
reefs cover only a tiny fraction of the ocean floor.
The comparison holds in three ways:

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 8 World Geography: Some Glimpses AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Structure. A rainforest’s trees build a tall, branching frame full of hiding places; a reef’s
corals — tiny sea animals — build a hard, branching ridge that does the same job
underwater.
Diversity. The Great Barrier Reef alone is a complex, interconnected habitat housing
hundreds of species of coral and thousands of species of fish and other sea animals.
Fragility. Both look permanent and are not. Reefs face serious threats from overfishing,
pollution and climate change, so their conservation is crucial.

Why it happens: the reason both are so rich is the same in the sea as on land — a
structure with many different niches. A flat sandy seabed offers one kind of place
to live, so few species can share it. A reef offers ledges, caves, branches, sunlit tops
and shaded undersides, each suiting a different animal, so hundreds of species can
live side by side without competing for exactly the same thing. Corals can build this
structure only in shallow, warm, clear, sunlit water — which is why reefs like the
Great Barrier Reef lie on shallow tropical shelves, and why anything that clouds,
warms or chemically changes that water threatens the whole structure at once.

Q4 How do the oceans help to regulate the Earth’s climate?

In three ways, all of them following from the fact that the oceans cover about 71 per cent of the
Earth’s surface and hold 97 per cent of its water.

1. They store heat and give it back slowly. Water heats up and cools down far more slowly
than land. The ocean absorbs heat when the sun is strong and releases it slowly afterwards,
so coastal places never get as hot in the day or as cold at night as places far inland — think
of the difference between a summer night in Mumbai and one in Jaisalmer.
2. They put moisture into the air. Water evaporating from the ocean forms the clouds and the
rainfall the land depends on. India’s entire monsoon is ocean water on its way back to the
sea.
3. Their currents carry heat across the world. Warm currents bring warm water from the
equator toward the poles; cold currents bring cold water from the poles toward the equator.
The chapter’s example is the Gulf Stream, which flows north from near the Equator through
the Atlantic towards Western Europe and makes places like the United Kingdom warmer
than other places at the same latitude.

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 8 World Geography: Some Glimpses AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

cold — high latitudes

W. Europe

warm cold
current current

warm — near the Equator

Currents move heat away from the Equator and cold away from the poles,
evening out temperatures the sun alone would leave extreme.

Warm and cold currents act as the Earth’s heat delivery system.

Why it happens: the sun does not heat the Earth evenly — it strikes the Equator
almost straight on and the poles at a slant. Left to itself that would make the tropics
unbearably hot and the poles far colder still. The oceans (with the winds) even the
difference out, moving warmth polewards and cold equatorwards, and holding on to
heat so that no place swings too fast between day and night or summer and winter.
The oceans also work chemically: their plankton absorb carbon dioxide, and the
water itself dissolves it, slowing the warming caused by that gas.

Q5 What is the main reason for the Great Barrier Reef facing threats today?

Human activity — and above all the way it is changing the ocean water itself. The chapter is
explicit under Fig. 1.9: the bleaching and death of coral occurs due to changes in the chemical
composition of ocean waters, largely caused by human actions, and it leads to the loss of
habitat of a whole host of sea animals.
Three human pressures are named:

Climate change — warmer, chemically altered water, which is what bleaches the coral;
Pollution — including what runs off the land into the sea;
Overfishing — which strips out the animals that keep the reef in balance.

All three come from people, so conservation of the reef is described as crucial.

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 8 World Geography: Some Glimpses AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Why it happens: corals are living animals that can survive only in a narrow band of
conditions — warm but not too warm, clear, and of the right chemistry. When the
water moves outside that band, the coral loses the colour it gets from the tiny
organisms living inside it, turns white and dies. That single death takes a whole
community with it, because the reef is the house the other animals live in, not
merely a neighbour. Losing the coral is like losing the trees of a forest: everything
that depended on the structure goes too. And because the reef stretches over 2,000
km and covers about 350,000 square kilometres, a change spread across the ocean
can damage all of it at once, which local protection alone cannot prevent.

Q6 Why is the Amazon Rainforest often called the ‘Lungs of the Earth’?

Because its trees exchange gases with the air on a scale nothing else on land can match. The
Amazon is an area of tall, mostly evergreen trees receiving a very high amount of rainfall, so its
leaves work all year round, taking in carbon dioxide and giving out oxygen — which is what
lungs do.

It is supported by the basin of the Amazon River, the longest river in South America and the
world’s largest river by volume, which flows from the Andes Mountains in Peru east towards
the Atlantic Ocean, together with all its tributaries.
Almost 400 indigenous communities live in the forest and play an important role in
conserving it.
Today it is threatened by deforestation and climate change — which is why the name is used
as a warning as much as a compliment.

Why it happens: the comparison is worth examining rather than repeating. A
mature rainforest also uses up much of the oxygen it produces, because fallen
leaves and dead wood rot on the forest floor and rotting consumes oxygen. So the
Amazon is not literally refilling the world’s oxygen tank. What it genuinely does is
store an immense amount of carbon in its wood, roots and soil — carbon that goes
straight back into the air if the forest is cut or burnt — and recycle moisture, drawing
water up through its roots and breathing it out from its leaves, where it forms cloud
and falls again as rain. In that sense it regulates the air and the rainfall of a large
part of the planet, which is what the phrase is really pointing at.

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 8 World Geography: Some Glimpses AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Sample answer:
The Sahara Desert (a hot desert, Africa). The Sahara is the largest hot desert in the
world, with temperatures ranging from 30°C to 46°C, rainfall below 25 cm and hardly
any vegetation. Everything that lives there is shaped by that shortage of water and
excess of heat. Cacti store water in their leaves; date palms crowd around the oases,
where water reaches the surface. The Saharan fennec fox has very large ears that let
it dissipate heat and hear prey moving underground. People have adapted just as
deliberately: nomadic tribes herd sheep, goats and camels and move with them;
their loose traditional clothing and headgear are designed to keep the body cool;
and some build their houses underground, a design that stays cool in summer and
warm in winter. For the globe, the Sahara matters twice over — its ancient trade
routes carried gold, salt and ideas to the Mediterranean world, and today dust
blown from it crosses the Atlantic to deliver phosphorus to the Amazon Rainforest.
The Great Barrier Reef (a coral reef, off Australia). The reef stretches over 2,000
km and covers about 350,000 square kilometres, and is recognised as a UNESCO
World Heritage Site. Because corals build a branching structure full of ledges and
hiding places, the reef houses hundreds of species of coral and thousands of species
of fish and other sea animals; reefs as a whole provide food and shelter for about
one-quarter of all ocean species, which is why they are called the ‘rainforests of the
sea’. People living along that coast depend on the reef for fishing and for tourism. Its
global implication is that the reef is a warning system: bleaching occurs when the
chemical composition of ocean waters changes, largely because of human actions,
so the whiteness spreading across the coral is a measurement of what the world is
doing to its oceans.
Linking them. A desert and a reef could hardly be more different, yet both make the
same point. Each is a place where life survives inside narrow limits; each supports
human ways of life built around those limits; and each is now being changed by
decisions taken far away, by people who will never see it.

Why it happens: when you choose features for a question like this, pick ones where
the global link is easy to prove. Sahara dust feeding the Amazon and reef bleaching
caused by ocean chemistry are both cases where a local feature and a planetary
process are visibly connected — far stronger evidence than a general claim that
‘everything is connected’.

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 8 World Geography: Some Glimpses AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Q8 Discuss how oceans influence climate and trade. Use examples from the Indian and
Pacific Oceans.

INDIAN OCEAN PACIFIC OCEAN

Its Warm waters, rich biodiversity, historically important The largest and deepest of the
character for international trade oceans; home to whales and
(Fig. 1.5) tuna

Influence The distant Southern Indian Ocean influences the monsoon Its sheer size makes it the world’s
on climate in the Gangetic Plains — the rains that decide India’s largest store of heat and moisture;
farming year begin as moisture lifted off this ocean. The Bay being the deepest, it also holds the
of Bengal, the world’s largest bay, also influences the climate Mariana Trench, whose Challenger
of the lands around it. Deep reaches over 11,000 metres
below sea level — over 2,000
metres deeper than Mount Everest
is high.

Influence The Persian Gulf has carried trade between India and A rich fishing ground feeding the
on trade Europe for millennia; the Strait of Malacca is a narrow countries around it, and the
channel joining two seas through which a great share of highway between the industrial
Asian shipping passes; the Suez Canal, opened in 1869, links coasts of Asia and the Americas.
the Red Sea to the Mediterranean and gives the shortest
maritime route from India to Europe (Fig. 1.10). Bays such
as the Bay of Bengal give ports and dockyards safe havens
sheltered from the strong winds of the open ocean.

Why it happens: the two influences are really one. An ocean shapes climate because
water stores heat and releases moisture; it shapes trade because it is a flat, free road
on which heavy goods can be carried cheaply. Where the two meet, geography
decides history. India’s coast faces a warm ocean whose winds blow towards the
land in one season and away from it in another — so Indian sailors could ride the
monsoon out to Africa and Arabia and ride it home again, centuries before engines
existed. That is exactly why the Indian Ocean became historically important for
international trade, and why a narrow point on its route, such as the Strait of
Malacca or the man-made Suez Canal, carries an importance out of all proportion to
its size.

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 8 World Geography: Some Glimpses AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Q9 Choose one environmental issue (deforestation, reef bleaching, or desertification)
and explain its causes, impacts, and possible solutions.

Issue chosen: reef bleaching.
What it is. Bleaching is the whitening and then the death of coral. Since the coral is the
structure the whole reef community lives in, its death leads to the loss of habitat of a whole host
of sea animals (Fig. 1.9).
Causes. The chapter states the main one directly: bleaching occurs due to changes in the
chemical composition of ocean waters, largely caused by human actions. Alongside this the reef
faces overfishing, pollution and climate change. Warmer water, altered water chemistry,
chemicals and silt washed off the land, and the removal of the fish that keep the reef balanced
all push the coral outside the narrow conditions it can survive in.
Impacts.

The thousands of species of fish and other sea animals that shelter in the reef lose their
home; since reefs shelter about one-quarter of all ocean species, the loss is out of all
proportion to the area affected.
Coastal communities lose fishing grounds and tourism income.
Coasts lose the reef’s protection, since a living reef breaks the force of waves and storms
before they reach the shore.

Possible solutions.

Cut the greenhouse gas emissions that are warming and altering the ocean — the only cure
that reaches the main cause.
Control what enters the sea from the land: treated sewage, less chemical run-off from farms,
no plastic dumping.
Regulate fishing and enforce protected zones so the reef’s own animals can keep it healthy.
Protect and monitor the reef as the UNESCO World Heritage Site it is, and support coral
restoration where damage has already occurred.

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 8 World Geography: Some Glimpses AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

IF YOU MAIN CAUSES MAIN IMPACTS MAIN SOLUTIONS
CHOOSE
INSTEAD…

Deforestation Clearing forest for Loss of habitat and of Legal rights and support for
farmland, cattle, species; displacement of forest communities; earning
mining and roads; forest communities; thin soil from a standing forest (fruit,
logging; burning washed away; stored carbon nuts, rubber, tourism); satellite
released into the air; less monitoring of illegal clearing;
rain, as fewer trees return replanting; international
moisture funding

Desertification Overgrazing, over- Fertile land turns barren; Rotational grazing; tree belts
cultivation, cutting of crops and pasture fail; wells to hold soil and slow the wind;
trees and shrubs, over- run dry; people are forced rainwater harvesting and
use of groundwater, to migrate check dams; restoring native
and a warming, drying grasses; growing crops suited
climate to dry land

Why it happens: all three issues share one shape — a slow change that stays
invisible until it passes a point of no return. A reef looks fine until the summer it
bleaches; soil looks fine until the season it will not grow anything. This is why
prevention is so much cheaper than repair, and why the Yellowstone story on page
28 is worth remembering: the imbalance there took years to build up and was
reversed only by a deliberate act, reintroducing wolves in 1995.

Q10 Imagine you are a geographer asked to advise a government about protecting one
major landscape in your country. Which one would you choose, and why?

How to build this answer. You are giving advice, so structure it as advice: name the landscape,
say precisely what is threatening it, say what it does for the country (not just why it is beautiful),
and then give recommendations a government could actually carry out. Choose a landscape
you know something concrete about — a nearby river, forest, coast, hill range or wetland is
better than a famous one you know only by name.

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Sample answer:

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Landscape chosen: the Western Ghats.
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What it is and what it does. The Western Ghats are an old, forested range running

gl the western edge of peninsular India. They act as the water tower of the whole
apeninsula:
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filled by rain that these hills catch. They catch it because they stand across the path ag
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What threatens them. Forest cleared for plantations, quarrying and mining, hill roads
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My recommendations to the government. First, protect the remaining continuous

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acountry becomes a landslide. Third, involve the
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people who live in the Ghats, giving forest communities a legal share in protecting
and earning from the forest, as the indigenous communities of the Amazon do.
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precious’. It is ‘this place is already
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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 8 World Geography: Some Glimpses AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Q11 Imagine that someone is funding a group of you for a road trip across two
continents. There are differences of opinion on which two they should be. Make a
pitch for the ones you would like everyone to go to. Use a blank map, trace your
route and locate the places on it, and try to convince the others to your point of
view. You could use a variety of creative ways.

How to make a pitch that wins. A pitch is not a list of places; it is an argument. Build it in four
parts: (1) the idea that ties the trip together in one sentence; (2) the route, traced on your blank
map with each stop marked; (3) the reason each stop earns its place — a landform you cannot
see anywhere else; (4) the practical case — that the route is continuous by road, and that the
two continents are joined by land so no flight is needed. Then present it creatively: a hand-
drawn map with the route in colour, a short skit as travel guides, a poster of the five stops, or a
day-by-day travel diary written in advance.

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 8 World Geography: Some Glimpses AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Sample pitch: Asia and Europe — ‘From the Roof of the World to the Great Plain’.
The idea: Asia and Europe are one continuous landmass, so this is the only pair of
continents you can cross end to end without ever leaving the road — and along the
way the land itself changes from the highest place on Earth to one of the flattest.

STOP LANDFORM WHY IT EARNS ITS PLACE

1. Edge of the Plateau The highest and largest plateau on Earth, averaging over
Tibetan Plateau 4,500 m — the ‘Third Pole’, where the Indus and the
Brahmaputra begin

2. Gobi Desert, Cold desert The ‘Land of the Eternal Blue Sky’ — 8 to 9 months of
Mongolia sunshine, yet winter temperatures down to −30°C. Proof
that a desert need not be hot.

3. The Eurasian Temperate Over 8,000 km of open grass, a global carbon sink, a resting
Steppes grassland place for the Siberian crane — and a night in a yurt

4. The Ural Ancient mountain We cross from Asia into Europe on foot at the natural
Mountains range boundary between the two continents, in a range famous
for its caves and its semiprecious stones

5. The European Plain, then young One of the largest flat lands in the world, its wheat fields
Plain, ending in the mountains and river valleys, finishing at the 1,200 km crescent of the
Alps Alps

The closing line of the pitch: ‘Any trip can show you five beautiful places. This one
shows you why they are different from one another — because in six weeks we will
have driven from the highest land on Earth, across a desert too far inland for rain,
over a grassland, past a mountain wall old enough to have been worn flat, and onto
a plain built by rivers. That is the whole of this chapter, seen from a bus window.’

Why it happens: the reason this route is persuasive is that it follows a real
geographical logic rather than a wish-list. Height falls steadily from stop 1 to stop 5;
rainfall rises as you move away from the deep interior towards the Atlantic; and the
age of the rock changes from the young, still-rising Himalaya and Alps to the
ancient, worn-down Urals. When you argue for a route, an argument built on a
pattern will always beat one built on preference.

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 8 World Geography: Some Glimpses AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Try This: If your group prefers a different pair, the strongest rivals are Africa and
Asia (joined at the Suez, so also drivable: the Nile, the Sahara, the savannah, then
the Persian Gulf and home to India) and North and South America (the Great
Lakes, the Rockies, the Colorado Plateau and Grand Canyon, then the Andes, the
Amazon and the Atacama). Make them argue their route the same way — idea, map,
reason per stop, practicality.

Chapter at a glance
The Earth is an oblate spheroid, so no flat map can be perfectly true. Every map projection
is a compromise: the Mercator keeps shape and direction but swells sizes near the poles,
the Robinson balances size against shape. To understand the world fairly, look at more than
one projection.
The oceans cover about 71 per cent of the Earth’s surface and hold 97 per cent of its water.
They feed life, give us almost half our oxygen through plankton, and steady the climate by
soaking up heat, releasing it slowly and adding moisture to the air. Currents, trenches and
reefs make the ocean floor as varied as the land.
Seas, gulfs, bays, straits and canals are named according to their shape and their link to the
ocean, and each has shaped trade — the Persian Gulf, the Bay of Bengal, the Strait of
Malacca and the man-made Suez Canal (1869).
Each continent is visited through one or two landforms: Asia (Tibetan Plateau, Gobi Desert,
Eurasian Steppes, Urals), Europe (European Plain, Alps), Africa (Sahara, savannah, the Nile),
South America (Andes, Amazon, Atacama), North America (Colorado Plateau, Rockies,
Appalachians, Great Lakes) and Australia (the Great Australian Desert and the Great Barrier
Reef).
Landforms are not scenery — they decide where rain falls, where soil is fertile, where rivers
rise and therefore where people settle, farm and trade.
Human actions — deforestation, overfishing, pollution, overuse of resources, the waste of
fast fashion — upset this balance, producing coral bleaching, desertification, loss of
biodiversity and climate change. Studying world geography is how we learn to manage
these features wisely.

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 8 World Geography: Some Glimpses AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Quick revision

TERM WHAT IT MEANS WHERE THE FACT TO REMEMBER
CHAPTER USES
IT

Oblate A nearly spherical shape that bulges at The Complexity of This curved shape is exactly why
spheroid the equator and is slightly flattened at Mapping the a flat map must distort
the poles due to its rotation Earth, p. 2 something

Map The process of showing the Earth on a pp. 2–3, Fig. 1.2 Mercator preserves shape and
projection flat surface direction; Robinson balances
size and shape

Plankton Microscopic organisms that have THINK ABOUT IT, Oceans give us almost half the
chlorophyll and use sunlight and p. 4 oxygen we breathe, and
carbon-dioxide to make food plankton make this possible

Ocean Giant ‘rivers’ flowing through the Ocean currents, The Gulf Stream makes the
currents ocean — warm ones from the equator pp. 5–6 United Kingdom warmer than
to the poles, cold ones from the poles to other places at the same
the equator latitude

Trench A very deep, V-shaped area of the Ocean trenches, The Challenger Deep in the
seafloor p. 6 Mariana Trench reaches over
11,000 metres below sea level

Reef A ridge at or near the surface of the The Great Barrier The Great Barrier Reef stretches
ocean, formed naturally or artificially Reef, pp. 7–8 over 2,000 km and covers about
350,000 square kilometres

Tectonic Geological forces related to the Tibetan Plateau, The Indo-Australian–Eurasian
movement of the Earth’s crust p. 12 collision raised both the
Himalaya and the plateau
behind it

Steppe A large area of flat unforested grassland The Eurasian Spread over 8,000 km west to
with a temperate climate, hot summers, Steppes, p. 14 east; a global carbon sink
cold winters and moderate, often
seasonal rainfall

Water towers Mountains that hold water at a height The Urals, p. 15 The Tibetan Plateau is called the
and release freshwater through melting ‘Third Pole’ for its freshwater
snow and glaciers reserves

Tundra / A treeless, cold plain whose soil stays The Urals, p. 16 Melting permafrost releases
permafrost frozen most of the time; that frozen soil carbon dioxide and methane,
is permafrost speeding up climate change

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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 8 World Geography: Some Glimpses AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

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