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World Geography
Semester Exam Study Guide
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First Nine Weeks Test:
1. What part of a map gives the cardinal and intermediate directions?
2. What is the study of the earth and how people use the earth?
3. What is a map?
4. What is the main influence on a people’s culture?
5. What group is made up of people who don’t adhere to any religion?
6. What do you call the part of the map that explains what the symbols on the map mean?
7. What is the most common type of scale used on a map?
8. What is the most-spoken language in the world?
9. What are the world’s four largest religions?
10. At 20,320 feet above sea level, what is the highest point in North America?
11. What is a narrow strip of land connecting two larger land masses?
12. What is a group of chain of islands?
13. Over half of Canada’s population lives in an area that stretches from Lake Erie along the St. Lawrence
River and is known as what?
14. Central and South America can be culturally combined to form an area known as what?
15. What is Canada known as?
16. Why does the majority of Canada’s population live along the southern border of the country?
17. What is the official language of the U.S.A.
18. What is the poorest country of the Western Hemisphere?
19. What do you call a country that is broken up by another country or an international body of water?
20. At 22,831 feet above sea level, what is the tallest mountain in the Andes and the highest point in the
Western Hemisphere?
21. What is an inland arm of the sea that meets the mouth of a river called?
22. What is an area where two or more rivers run together?
23. At 3,212 feet, what is the world’s highest waterfall?
24. What is the world’s widest waterfall?
25. What is a strip of land that juts out into a large body of water called?
26. What channel runs just north of the islands of Tierra del Fuego and allows ships a safer passage than
the waters off Cape Horn?
27. What is a wide area of level, elevated land called?
28. What is the southern-most point of South America?
29. Where does the majority of South America’s population live?
30. What is one of the world’s largest estuaries?
31. How large is the Amazon River?
32. What problem has occurred because of Brazil trying to develop the interior of their country?
33. Europe is the northwestern peninsula of the “supercontinent” known as what?
34. What is a body of land surrounded on three sides by water known as?
35. Europe and Asia are divided by what mountain range?
36. What are long, narrow inlets of the sea surrounded by high, rugged cliffs called?
37. What is the constant flow of air from the west to the east in the temperate zones of the earth known
as?
38. What warm water current helps give Western Europe a more temperate climate?
39. At 18,510 feet above sea level, what is the tallest mountain in Europe?
pg. 1
40. At 15,782 feet above sea level, what is the tallest mountain in Western Europe?
41. What is the largest island of the British Isles?
42. What tunnel connects the island of Great Britain to mainland Europe?
43. What type of energy is produced from the heat of the earth’s interior?
44. One-fifth of the Netherlands is reclaimed from the sea using a series of what?
45. The land reclaimed from the sea in the Netherlands is known as what?
46. The contact and interaction of one culture with another is known as what?
47. Having the desire to protect your culture from outside influences is known as what?
48. What is the smallest sovereign state in the world?
49. What is the economic and political organization that was formed in Europe to stimulate trade and
build up the economies of the member countries?
50. What is the common currency used by the countries that make up the European Union?
Eastern Europe and Russia:
51. In system of government does the government control the means of production?
52. What was the name given to Eastern Europe during the time it was dominated by the Soviet Union
53. What was the execution of six million Jews in Nazi concentration camps during World War II known
as?
54. What are areas of a city where a minority is forced to live known as?
55. What is a revolution without bloodshed known as?
56. What is attempting to drive other ethnic groups out of a region known as?
57. What is the longest river of Europe?
58. What is the largest lake in the world?
59. What is the deepest lake in the world?
60. What is the name for the largely treeless areas of Russia dominated by very small plants and animals
that have adapted to the polar conditions of the region?
61. What is the name for the broad, forested areas of Russia where the trees don’t grow to great size
due to the harsh conditions?
62. What is the name for the grasslands of Russia that have been converted into Russia’s most
productive agricultural region?
63. The southern portion of Eastern Europe is fairly mountainous except for what regions?
64. After World War II, much of Eastern Europe was dominated by what country?
65. In the southern portion of Poland, what mountain range provides rich mineral resources for the
country?
66. What religion is practiced by 95% of Poland?
67. What happened to the Jews of Poland during World War II?
68. What country was created from the Austro-Hungarian Empire after World War I?
69. During the early 1990’s, Czechoslovakia was split up between what two ethnic groups?
70. What is the Great Alfold known as?
71. What is a characteristic of the Balkan Peninsula?
72. How did Albania hurt itself economically after World War II?
73. What country was created after World War I and was made up of six Slavic republics?
74. What happened in Bosnia-Herzegovina In the early 1990’s?
75. What are Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are known as?
76. What was one of the worst nuclear accidents in history, affecting the Ukraine, Belarus and Russia.
77. What is the name given to the area of Russia which is poorly drained and contains some of the
world's largest swamps and flood plains?
78. Economically, how did Eastern Europe compare to Western Europe after World War II?
pg. 2
79. How many Jews lived in Poland before World War II?
80. What country gained its independence from the Soviet Union through a velvet revolution?
82. Why did the Soviet Union annex Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania?
83. How large is Russia?
Central and Southwest Asia:
84. What is the name given to the area between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers that stretches from
modern day Iraq to Israel?
85. What Central Asian sea is shrinking, causing the loss of the fishing industry in that region?
86. What is the name commonly used for Southwest Asia?
87. What was the name given to the mandate created in the Middle East after World War I that had an
Arab and Jewish population (and the Jewish population continued to grow in the area as World War
II approached?
88. What was the name of the terrorist organization that led Israel to invade Lebanon in the early
1980’s?
89. What is the name used for the series of uprisings that are currently affecting almost twenty Middle
Eastern and North African countries?
90. What is the name of the world’s largest sand desert (also known as the Empty Quarter)?
91. What is the name of the organization that was created to help control the production and the prices
of oil?
92. What is the name given to the time when hunter-gatherers first began to farm?
93. What is a name given to a region governed by an outside power until that region is ready for
independence?
94. What do you call the severe restriction on trade with other countries?
95. What type of plant is used to convert seawater to fresh water that can be used for drinking and
irrigation purposes?
96. What region of the world is known as the birthplace of civilization?
97. Why has Southwestern Asia always been an area of conflict?
98. Which statement describes the countries of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan?
99. What is the main thing in common amount the various ethnicities and cultures of the Central
Asian countries?
100. What major religion developed in Southwest Asia?
101. After World War II, that nation of Israel was formed out of what country?
102. What happened when Israel was formed in 1948?
103. Although Jordan is made up of dry, rocky desert, what fact helped it develop its economy?
104. What happened in Lebanon after the Israeli and U.S. withdrawal in the 1980’s?
105. Why did the first Gulf War occur?
106. Why did the second Gulf War occur?
107. List two things about the Arabian Peninsula.
108. Every year around two million Muslims from around the world make a pilgrimage to what
city in Saudi Arabia?
109. List three things about Cyprus.
110. What are the main landforms of Central and Southwest Asia?
111. What does “stan” mean?
112. What did the Soviet Union do that led to problems with the Aral Sea?
113. How did Great Britain get the Arabs living in the Ottoman Empire to support the Allies during World
War I?
114. Why did the United Nations divide the nation of Palestine?
pg. 3
115. In 1983, the U.S. Embassy and the Marine barracks were bombed in what Middle Eastern
country?
116. How have many of the Middle Eastern countries tried not to let their modernization interfere with?
117. How are Turkey and Iran different from the rest of the Middle East?
Africa:
118. Covering around three million square miles with around eighty thousand miles of oases, what is
the largest desert in the world?
119. What is the longest river in the world?
120. What controls the flooding on the Nile River and has led to an increase in Egypt’s agricultural
production?
121. What deep, trench-like valley with steep walls runs from Mozambique to Ethiopia in Africa?
122. What is the highest point in Africa?
123. What is the Arab word used to describe the countries that share the Atlas Mountains and the small
coastal plains along the Mediterranean Sea?
124. Who were the original inhabitants of Northern Africa?
125. What important trade route connects the Mediterranean Sea to the Gulf of Suez?
126. What is the name of the large area of savannas that separates the Sahara Desert from the tropical
rain forests of Africa?
127. What group of people migrated from Central Africa into Western and Southern Africa?
128. What is the largest of the Bantu languages?
129. What is the largest lake in Africa and the third largest lake in the world?
130. What is the southern-most tip of Africa called?
131. What is the name given to the Dutch colonists who settled Cape Town, South Africa?
132. What organization formed in the country of South Africa to protest apartheid?
133. Who was the leader of the African National Congress that was thrown in jail for life by the South
African government – he was later elected president of the country?
134. What are the fertile areas of the Sahara Desert known as?
135. What are the natural grasslands found in tropical regions called?
136. What do you call a government in which one ethnic group rules over others?
137. What was the name given to the system of racial separation or “apartness” that developed in
the country of South Africa?
138. What is Northern Africa called?
139. How was the fertile delta around the Nile River formed?
140. List two things about Sub-Saharan Africa .
141. How are the countries of the Maghreb different than the rest of Africa?
142. Why is the Sahel considered a transition zone?
143. What group of boys between the ages of 7 and 17 travelled through dangerous lands to refugee
camps in Kenya and Ethiopia to escape execution?
144. Much of Central Africa:
145. What is Eastern Africa known as?
146. What country had a population that was 80% Hutu with that group controlling the government
until a civil war broke out in the 1990’s between the Hutu and the Tutsi?
147. What country had a government controlled by the Tutsi even though they made up less than 20%
of the population?
148. What was discovered in South Africa in the late 1800’s that led to many Europeans moving into
the region?
149. What African nation is home to one of the oldest civilizations in the world?
150. What are the Bantu known for more than their ethnicity?