Q1.
What do you think each of the different colours in the map in Fig. 1.1 represents?
Answer
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, seas, lakes, rivers | The deep blue that surrounds every landmass; the paler blue of shallow shelves near coasts |
| Green | Plains | The Amazon and Congo basins, the European Plain, eastern North America, the belt across northern Asia |
| Yellow / brown | Plateaus | The interior of southern Africa, the Deccan in India, the higher 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.