Daily Quiz: UPSC Prelims Marathon – March 27, 2020

The major factors of soil formation are the nature of the parent rock and climatic factors. Other factors are the topography, role of organic material and time taken for the composition of soil formation. All these differ from place to place.

Van Mahotsava is an annual tree planting festival in the month of July. During this festival thousand of trees are planted all over India. In 1950, it was started by K. M. Munshi, the Union Minister for Agriculture and Food at that time. It was started to create awareness in the mind of the people for the conservation of forests and planting of new trees. Van Mahotsava is celebrated as a festival of life. In India it was started as a crusade to save mother earth. The name Van Mahotsava means ‘the festival of trees’. It began in July 1947 after a flourishing tree planting drive was undertaken in Delhi, in which national leaders like Dr Rajendra Prasad and Jawaharlal Nehru participated. The festival was simultaneously celebrated in a number of states in India. Since then, thousands of saplings of diverse species are planted with energetic participation of the locals and various agencies like the forest department.

Australia is the largest producer of bauxite in the world. It is a leading producer of gold, diamond, iron ore, tin and nickel. It is also rich in copper, lead, zinc and manganese. Kalgoorlie and Coolgardie areas of Western Australia have the largest deposits of gold.

Coal is the most abundantly found fossil fuel. It is used as a domestic fuel, in industries such as iron and steel, steam engines and to generate electricity. Electricity from coal is called thermal power. The coal which we are using today was formed millions of years ago when giant ferns and swamps got buried under the layers of earth. Coal is therefore referred to as Buried Sunshine.

The Mitigation of Climate Change in Agriculture (MICCA) programme strengthens FAO’s longstanding work to address climate change in the agriculture, forestry and fisheries sectors and supports countries participating in the climate change negotiation processes within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.