Resources and Development Test - 4

The running water cuts through the clayey soils and makes deep channels as gullies. The land becomes unfit for cultivation and is known as bad land. They are characterized by steep slopes, minimal vegetation, lack of a substantial regolith, and high drainage density. Canyons, ravines, gullies, buttes, mesas, hoodoos and other such geologic forms are common in badlands.

The word laterite has been derived from the Latin word that means brick. The laterite soil is formed under conditions of high temperature and heavy rainfall with alternate wet and dry periods, which leads to leaching of soil, leaving only oxides of iron and aluminum. 

Terraces reduce both the amount and velocity of water moving across the soil surface, which greatly reduces soil erosion. Terracing thus permits more intensive cropping than would otherwise be possible. Western and central Himalayas have well developed terrace farming.

India has land under a variety of relief features, namely; mountains, plateaus, plains and islands. Mountains account for 30 per cent of the total surface area of the country and ensure perennial flow of some rivers, provide facilities for tourism and ecological aspects. India is home to some of the tallest and gallant mountain ranges in the world. These ranges come with some of the most attractive sceneries and ecosystems in the world. The diversified altitudes and ranges feature a wide range of flora and fauna. 

Mining ruins the land, water, forests and air. The loss or pollution of natural resources degrades the quality of human life in these areas.
The large scale mining and allied activities going on in the Jharkhand region have caused severe damage to the land resources of the area. Vast areas of rich forests and agricultural land belonging to the indigenous people have been laid waste because of haphazard mining. 

India has land under a variety of relief features, namely; mountains, plateaus, plains and islands. About 43 per cent of the land area is plain, which provides facilities for agriculture and industry. India fortunate in possessing one of the world's most extensive and fertile plains, approximately 2500 km from the Sutlej in the west to the Brahmaputra in the east made up of alluvial soil brought down in the form of fine silt by the mighty rivers. These Great Northern Plains consist of the Indus basin, the Ganga-Brahmaputra basin and the tributaries of these mighty river systems. The bulk of the Indus basin falls within Pakistan but a part of it is shared by Punjab and Haryana. The Ganga Brahmaputra basin is larger of the two and covers a large number of states in northern India.

Ladakh is the highest plateau in the state of Jammu & Kashmir with much of it being over 3,000 m (9,800 ft). It extends from the Himalayan to the Kunlun Ranges and includes the upper Indus River valley. The cold desert of Ladakh is relatively isolated from the rest of the country. It has very rich cultural heritage but it is deficient in water, infrastructure and some vital minerals. This calls for balanced resource planning at the national, state, regional and local levels.

The running water cuts through the clayey soils and makes deep channels as gullies. The land becomes unfit for cultivation and is known as badland. In the Chambal basin such lands are called ravines. The Chambal basin is characterised by an undulating floodplain, gullies and ravines. The Hadauti plateau in Rajasthan occurs in the upper catchment of the Chambal River to the southeast of the Mewar Plains. It occurs with the Malwa plateau in the east.

The black soils are also called Regur  and black cotton soils because cotton is the most important crop grown on these soils. Because of their high fertility and retentivity of moisture, the black soils are widely used for producing several important crops. Some of the major crops grown on the black soils are cotton, wheat, jowar. These soils are made up of volcanic rocks and lava-flow. It is concentrated over Deccan Lava Tract which includes parts of Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.

Forest area (% of land area) in India was reported at 23.77 % in 2015, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. Currently, 15 States and union territories have 33% of their geographical area under forests. In India’s north-east however, forest cover showed a decrease; 1,71,306 square kilometres, or 65.34%, of the geographical area was under forest and this was a 630 square kilometre decline from the 2015 assessment.