Vegetation and soils

Traps in Vegetation and soils

• Confuses climatic types/features
  Equatorial: rain all year, small annual temperature range. Savanna: distinct wet and dry seasons. Hot desert: very low rainfall, high diurnal range.
• Picks a closely related feature or term
  Learn related features as contrasting pairs: how each forms and what it looks like.
• Misattributes landform processes
  River: V-shaped valleys, meanders, ox-bow lakes, deltas. Wind: mushroom rocks, barchans, zeugen, yardangs. Glacial: U-shaped valleys, cirques, moraines.
• Earth's structure and tectonics errors
  Crust (sial over sima) → mantle → outer core (liquid) → inner core (solid). Divergent boundaries: rift valleys, mid-ocean ridges. Convergent: fold mountains, trenches, volcanoes.
• Confuses vegetation belts and their characteristics
  Rain forest: evergreen, layered, buttress roots, hardwoods. Savanna: tall grass with scattered trees, deciduous in dry season. Mangrove: stilt/aerial roots on tidal coasts. Coniferous (taiga): needle leaves, softwood. Mediterranean: evergreen with waxy/thick leaves. Tundra: mosses, lichens.
• Misunderstands farming systems
  Shifting cultivation/bush fallow: subsistence, hoe and cutlass, moving plots as soils tire. Plantation: large-scale cash crops, capital-intensive.
• Gives only part of the answer
  Recall the full definition or list of factors and check the option covers it.
• Picks the wrong place or location
  Learn each resource or feature with its location on a map, and the reason it occurs there.
• Over-generalises a pattern
  Geographic patterns have exceptions; be wary of always/never/all.
• Reverses the process or effect
  Trace the cause and effect step by step and check the direction at each step.
• Chooses a true but irrelevant statement
  Test each option against the exact term or feature in the stem.
• Uses an everyday idea instead of the geography
  Test the intuition against the physical process; geography terms and causes often differ from their everyday sense.
• Confuses soil types and processes
  Horizon A (topsoil, humus, eluviation), B (subsoil, illuviation), C (weathered parent rock). Podzols: coniferous areas, acidic, leached. Chernozems: temperate grasslands, rich humus. Laterites: hot wet tropics, iron/aluminium oxides.
• Confuses glacial and desert landforms
  Glacial erosion: cirque/corrie, arête, pyramidal peak, U-shaped valley, hanging valley. Glacial deposition: moraine, drumlin, esker, erratic. Desert (wind): barchan, seif, yardang, zeuge; desert (water): wadi, playa, bajada, inselberg.