Danho
ZIMSEC A Level · 6037/3 · J2023

Geography Paper 3 June 2023

Questions
39
Total marks
175
Time allowed
180 min
Syllabus code
6037/3

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Questions
39
Pass mark
24
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Answer every question in the printed order, get marked at the end, then see the answers.

The questions

Question 101

[1 marks]Statistics: measurement scales, Poisson, chi-square, spatial autocorrelation
Classify the data 'male, female' into the appropriate measurement scale.

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Question 102

[1 marks]Statistics: measurement scales, Poisson, chi-square, spatial autocorrelation
Classify the data 'primary, secondary, tertiary' into the appropriate measurement scale.

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Question 103

[1 marks]Statistics: measurement scales, Poisson, chi-square, spatial autocorrelation
Classify the data '20 degrees C, 23 degrees C, 32 degrees C' into the appropriate measurement scale.

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Question 104

[2 marks]Statistics: measurement scales, Poisson, chi-square, spatial autocorrelation
At a private clinic patients arrive at an average rate of 5 per hour, and arrivals follow a Poisson distribution. Calculate the probability that exactly 2 patients arrive in a given hour, correct to 4 decimal places.

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Question 105

[2 marks]Statistics: measurement scales, Poisson, chi-square, spatial autocorrelation
At a private clinic patients arrive at an average rate of 5 per hour, following a Poisson distribution. Calculate the probability that at most 3 patients arrive in a given hour, correct to 4 decimal places.

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Question 106

[2 marks]Statistics: measurement scales, Poisson, chi-square, spatial autocorrelation
Patients arrive at a clinic at an average rate of 5 per hour, following a Poisson distribution. Calculate the probability that not more than 1 patient arrives in a given two-hour interval, correct to 5 decimal places.

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Question 107

[2 marks]Statistics: measurement scales, Poisson, chi-square, spatial autocorrelation
A chi-square test of independence is performed on a contingency table with 2 rows (males, females) and 3 columns (age 20-30, 31-40, 41-50). State the number of degrees of freedom.

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Question 108

[3 marks]Statistics: measurement scales, Poisson, chi-square, spatial autocorrelation
A chi-square test on cholera cases by age and sex at Musiso Mission hospital gives a test statistic of about 0.08 with 2 degrees of freedom, against a 5 per cent critical value of 5.991. What is the correct conclusion?
  1. AReject the null hypothesis: there is a significant association, so age and sex are dependent factors in these cases.
  2. BThe test is invalid because a chi-square statistic that small indicates the expected frequencies were calculated wrongly.
  3. CNo conclusion is possible without also calculating the correlation coefficient between the age and sex columns.
  4. DDo not reject the null hypothesis: there is no significant association, so age and sex are independent factors in these cases.

Question 109

[2 marks]Statistics: measurement scales, Poisson, chi-square, spatial autocorrelation
Give one recognised index of spatial autocorrelation used in geographical analysis.

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Question 110

[2 marks]Statistics: measurement scales, Poisson, chi-square, spatial autocorrelation
Why does spatial autocorrelation matter when a geographer applies classical statistical tests to spatial data?
  1. AClassical tests assume observations are independent, and spatially autocorrelated residuals break that assumption, giving artificially small standard errors and false significance.
  2. BIt converts ordinal data into interval data, which is what classical tests such as the t-test are designed to accept as input.
  3. CIt removes the need to sample at all, because a spatially autocorrelated variable can be measured once and applied to the whole study area.
  4. DIt guarantees that the distribution of the variable is normal across the study area, so a parametric test such as the t-test can always be used in place of a non-parametric one without any further checking of the data.

Question 201

[2 marks]Mapwork: relief, drainage and settlement
The Masembura 1:50 000 extract shows steep sided hill masses rising to trigonometrical stations at 1315.8 m and 1317.2 m, standing well above a gently undulating plateau surface cut across the same granite. What is the most likely explanation for these hills?
  1. AThey are terminal moraines, ridges of unsorted debris left along the front of an ice sheet that formerly covered the plateau surface and stood still long enough for the material it carried to be dumped in place.
  2. BThey are volcanic cones built up by successive eruptions above a hot spot beneath the plateau.
  3. CThey are resistant granite masses that survived while more heavily jointed rock around them was weathered and stripped away.
  4. DThey are fold mountains raised by compression where two continental plates collided along this part of the craton.

Question 202

[2 marks]Mapwork: relief, drainage and settlement
The Masembura extract shows streams rising in wide, flat, marshy headwater depressions on the plateau surface, which are seasonally waterlogged and lie where the water table intersects a low gradient surface. Give the local Zimbabwean name for this landform.

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Question 203

[2 marks]Mapwork: relief, drainage and settlement
The drainage on the Masembura extract forms a branching, tree-like pattern with tributaries joining at acute angles across the whole sheet. Name this pattern and state what it indicates about the underlying rock.
  1. ARadial, indicating a central volcanic cone or dome from which all the streams flow outward down its flanks.
  2. BTrellis, indicating alternating bands of hard and soft rock which the tributaries follow along the strike.
  3. CDendritic, indicating uniform, structurally undeformed rock of even resistance, which a granite plateau provides.
  4. DDeranged, indicating a surface recently disorganised by glacial deposition with no established drainage lines.

Question 204

[2 marks]Mapwork: relief, drainage and settlement
The Masembura extract shows individual homestead symbols scattered singly across Masembura Communal Land and Msana Communal Land, rather than grouped into villages. What is this settlement type called, and what best explains it?
  1. ANucleated settlement, explained by the need for households to cluster tightly around a single defensible water point that can be relied on through the dry season when the surrounding streams have stopped flowing.
  2. BLinear settlement, explained by households strung out along the tarred road to gain access to markets and transport.
  3. CDispersed settlement, explained by a subsistence farming pattern in which each household lives on its own arable holding near its fields and water.
  4. DPlanned settlement, explained by a resettlement scheme that allocated regularly spaced plots of equal size across the area.

Question 301

[2 marks]GIS: georeferencing, digitising and measurement
In QGIS, the operation of assigning real world coordinates to a scanned map image by matching identified points on the image to known ground coordinates is required before any measurement can be taken from it. Name this operation.

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Question 302

[2 marks]GIS: georeferencing, digitising and measurement
Six ground control points spread across the Esigodini sheet, from easting 699000 to 706000 and northing 7751000 to 7756000, are entered before georeferencing. Why are several well spread points used rather than two close together?
  1. ASeveral spread points allow a transformation to be fitted across the whole sheet and its residual error to be measured, so distortion is corrected everywhere rather than only locally.
  2. BThe software requires exactly six points and will not accept any other number, so the count is fixed by QGIS rather than chosen by the analyst.
  3. CSpreading the control points to the corners increases the spatial resolution of the scanned raster, so that more ground detail becomes visible after the fit than the original scan was able to record.
  4. DEach additional point permanently increases the map's scale, so six points convert a 1:50 000 sheet to a larger scale suitable for measurement.

Question 303

[3 marks]GIS: georeferencing, digitising and measurement
Drainage density is calculated from the total length of all streams within a grid square and the area of that square. On a 1:50 000 sheet a 1 km grid square has an area of 1 square kilometre. If the total stream length measured within one such square is 3.6 km, calculate the drainage density and give its units.

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Question 304

[2 marks]GIS: georeferencing, digitising and measurement
The Esigodini sheet shows shallow open valleys, few perennial channels and long stretches of higher ground with almost no channels at all, giving a low to moderate drainage density. What best explains this?
  1. AA permeable, deeply weathered granite regolith that takes water in as throughflow, combined with gentle relief and a strongly seasonal rainfall regime.
  2. BAn exceptionally high annual rainfall total, which has eroded the smaller channels away and left only the largest valleys visible.
  3. CRecent glacial scour, which stripped the established drainage lines from the higher ground and left channels surviving only in the sheltered valley bottoms where the moving ice could not reach them.
  4. DAn impermeable clay subsoil across the sheet, which sheds almost all rainfall as surface flow within minutes of it landing.

Question 305

[3 marks]GIS: georeferencing, digitising and measurement
Why do measurements matter in a GIS, beyond simply reading a distance off a map?
  1. AThey fix the coordinate reference system of a project, since a GIS derives its projection from the units in which the first measurement is taken.
  2. BThey are the raw material of derived indices such as drainage density and population density, they allow change to be quantified between dates, and they underpin buffering, overlay and site suitability analysis.
  3. CThey are needed only to print a scale bar in the map layout, since every other GIS operation works on attribute tables rather than on geometry.
  4. DThey convert a raster layer into a vector layer automatically as soon as a length or area is read off it, which is the only route by which features can be stored in a GIS database and later queried by attribute.

Question 401

[2 marks]Remote sensing and digital image processing
What distinguishes analogue from digital image processing?
  1. AAnalogue processing uses satellite imagery while digital processing uses aerial photography, the difference being the platform the image came from.
  2. BAnalogue processing works visually and manually on a continuous hard copy image, while digital processing manipulates numerical pixel values by computer, so it is quantitative and repeatable.
  3. CAnalogue processing can only be applied to black and white images, since the eye cannot judge tone reliably in colour, while digital processing is what makes any interpretation of colour or false colour composites possible at all.
  4. DAnalogue processing is carried out before the image is captured and digital processing afterwards, so the two happen at different stages of the same workflow.

Question 402

[3 marks]Remote sensing and digital image processing
On Fig. 4.1, image enhancement and image restoration are shown as separate stages. What distinguishes them?
  1. AEnhancement is performed by the sensor at the moment of capture while restoration is performed by the analyst afterwards.
  2. BEnhancement is subjective and improves appearance for human interpretation without adding information; restoration is objective and removes known defects using a model of the degradation.
  3. CEnhancement is applied to multispectral images and restoration only to single band panchromatic images.
  4. DEnhancement compresses the image so that it can be stored and transmitted economically, and restoration decompresses it again for display, so the two stages are simply the opposite halves of one file handling operation.

Question 403

[2 marks]Remote sensing and digital image processing
On Fig. 4.1, one stage partitions the image into its constituent regions or objects by thresholding, edge detection or region growing, and it is the point at which the outputs stop being images and start being image attributes. Name that stage.

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Question 404

[2 marks]Remote sensing and digital image processing
In remote sensing, name the type of resolution defined as the size of the ground area represented by a single pixel, so that a 30 m Landsat pixel resolves less detail than a 0.5 m WorldView pixel.

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Question 405

[3 marks]Remote sensing and digital image processing
A sensor records in 12 bits per pixel rather than 8. Which type of resolution has been improved, and what does the improvement allow?
  1. ARadiometric resolution, allowing 4096 rather than 256 brightness levels to be recorded, so subtle differences in reflected energy can be separated.
  2. BSpectral resolution, allowing several hundred narrow wavelength bands to be recorded instead of four broad ones.
  3. CTemporal resolution, allowing the same place on the ground to be revisited and imaged daily instead of once every sixteen days, so that rapid changes such as flooding or crop growth can be tracked through a season.
  4. DSpatial resolution, allowing objects half a metre across to be identified where previously 30 m was the limit.

Question 501

[3 marks]Research techniques: urban heat island and rainfall variability
Fig. 5.1 shows temperature in City X as roughly concentric closed isotherms falling outward from a hot central core, with the isotherms bending outward along the line of the river. What is this pattern, and why is the core hottest?
  1. AA frontal inversion: warm air riding up over a wedge of denser cold air is at its thickest above the centre of the built up area, so the trapped layer beneath it is warmest there and cools away towards the edges.
  2. BA katabatic effect: cold dense air drains off the surrounding higher ground at night and ponds at the city margins, leaving the centre relatively warm.
  3. CA rain shadow effect: the built up area lies in the lee of high ground, so descending air warms adiabatically over the city centre.
  4. DAn urban heat island: dense hard surfaces absorb and slowly release solar radiation, evapotranspiration is minimal, anthropogenic heat is added and street canyons trap outgoing longwave radiation.

Question 502

[2 marks]Research techniques: urban heat island and rainfall variability
On Fig. 5.1 the isotherms bend outward where the river crosses the city, marking a tongue of cooler air along the channel. Why is the river corridor cooler than the built up area around it?
  1. AWater reflects almost all incoming solar radiation, so the river has a far higher albedo than any built surface in the city.
  2. BThe river channel lies well below the general level of the city, so cold air draining into it is compressed and cools further.
  3. CFlowing water generates no friction with the air above it, so no sensible heat can be transferred from the surface at all.
  4. DOpen water has a high specific heat capacity so it warms slowly, and evaporation from its surface consumes latent heat, cooling the air above.

Question 503

[2 marks]Research techniques: urban heat island and rainfall variability
Define rainfall variability as the term is used in the study of climate.

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Question 504

[3 marks]Research techniques: urban heat island and rainfall variability
You are asked to show Zimbabwe's mean annual rainfall variations from normal for 1910 to 2000 on one diagram. Which technique is appropriate, and how is it constructed?
  1. AA dispersion diagram: plot every one of the ninety yearly totals as a dot on a single vertical axis, so that the spread of the record, its median and its interquartile range can all be read directly from the column of dots.
  2. BA departure from the mean bar graph: calculate the long term mean, plot each year's total minus that mean as a bar above or below a horizontal zero line representing the mean.
  3. CA pie chart: convert each year's rainfall to a percentage of the ninety year total and draw it as a segment, so that wet years occupy the larger sectors.
  4. DA scatter graph: plot rainfall against year and fit a best fit line, then read the correlation coefficient to measure how variable the record has been.

Question 505

[2 marks]Research techniques: urban heat island and rainfall variability
Which is a genuine disadvantage of using a departure from the mean bar graph to show ninety years of rainfall?
  1. AIt requires the underlying data to be normally distributed before the bars can be plotted, and long rainfall records are almost never normally distributed, so the technique cannot lawfully be applied to them.
  2. BIt hides the absolute totals and depends entirely on the base period chosen, so changing the years used for the mean changes every bar on the graph.
  3. CIt cannot show years that were drier than average, since a bar has no way of representing a negative quantity.
  4. DIt cannot show more than about ten years of record, because beyond that the horizontal axis becomes mathematically undefined.

Question 601

[2 marks]Research techniques: isochrones and sampling
On Insert 1, travel times by road to Gweru General Hospital are given as point values in minutes. Name the type of line drawn to join places of equal travel time.

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Question 602

[2 marks]Research techniques: isochrones and sampling
When drawing isochrones on Insert 1 at an interval of 10 minutes, which rule must be observed?
  1. AIsochrones must be drawn so that they pass exactly through the plotted point values themselves and are never interpolated between two of them, since any interpolated position would be an estimate rather than a measurement.
  2. BEach isochrone must be labelled with the number of data points it encloses rather than with the travel time it represents.
  3. CEach isochrone must be drawn as a perfect circle centred on the hospital, since travel time increases equally in every direction.
  4. DAn isochrone must never cross another isochrone, and it either closes on itself or runs off the edge of the frame rather than ending inside the map.

Question 603

[2 marks]Research techniques: isochrones and sampling
What does the spacing of isochrones on a completed travel time map tell the reader?
  1. AWidely spaced isochrones show where the data points were most numerous, since more points force the lines further apart.
  2. BThe spacing is fixed by the isoline interval chosen and so carries no information about the ground at all.
  3. CClosely spaced isochrones show where travel time rises steeply over a short distance, so they identify the poorly served directions.
  4. DClosely spaced isochrones show where the population density is highest, since more people are recorded in those areas.

Question 604

[3 marks]Research techniques: isochrones and sampling
A researcher divides a study area into rock type sub-areas, then samples randomly within each sub-area, taking more samples from the larger sub-areas than the smaller ones. Which sampling technique is this, and what is its main advantage?
  1. AQuota sampling, whose advantage is that it allows the researcher to choose the most typical site within each sub-area by judgement.
  2. BSystematic sampling, whose advantage is that it gives completely even coverage of the whole study area for the least fieldwork, since the interval is fixed in advance and no random numbers have to be generated.
  3. CSimple random sampling, whose advantage is that it removes all need for prior knowledge of the study area before sampling begins.
  4. DStratified random sampling, whose advantage is that every sub-group is represented in proportion to its size, so a small but important stratum cannot be missed.

Question 605

[2 marks]Research techniques: isochrones and sampling
What is the main weakness of systematic sampling, in which samples are taken at fixed regular intervals such as a quadrat every 50 metres along a transect?
  1. AIt requires prior knowledge of the sub-groups within the population, which is rarely available before fieldwork begins.
  2. BIt can be badly biased where the sampling interval coincides with a periodic pattern in the ground, such as ridge and furrow at the same spacing.
  3. CIt cannot be used in the field at all, because fixed intervals cannot be measured accurately without surveying equipment.
  4. DIt gives uneven coverage, since regular intervals leave large parts of a study area with no samples at all.

Question 701

[2 marks]Mitigation and adaptation: veldfires
A record of veldfire frequency in Zimbabwe by month gives: January to June 0 each, July 5, August 10, September 11, October 11, November 3, December 0. State the total number of fires recorded in the year.

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Question 702

[3 marks]Mitigation and adaptation: veldfires
A record of veldfire frequency in Zimbabwe gives zero from January to June, then 5 in July, 10 in August, 11 in September, 11 in October, 3 in November and 0 in December. Which statement best describes the trend?
  1. AFires occur in one sharply defined late dry season, rising from July to a peak in September and October, which together hold 55 per cent of the total, then falling abruptly in November.
  2. BFires are spread fairly evenly through the whole year, with only a slight rise towards the middle months, so no single season stands out as more dangerous than any other and control effort must be maintained continuously.
  3. CFires rise steadily from January to a single peak in December, following the onset of the rainy season.
  4. DFires occur in two separate seasons of equal size, one in the early part of the year and one in the later part.

Question 703

[2 marks]Mitigation and adaptation: veldfires
To draw a pie chart of the veldfire percentages, each percentage is converted to an angle at the centre of the circle. September accounts for 27.5 per cent of the fires. Calculate the angle of its segment in degrees.

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Question 704

[3 marks]Mitigation and adaptation: veldfires
Which set of statements correctly describes the characteristics of veldfires?
  1. AThey are surface fires burning the cured grass layer and litter in the late dry season, spread rapidly with the wind and uphill, and are largely human ignited.
  2. BThey are crown fires burning through a closed canopy, occur mainly in the wet season when fuel is abundant, and are almost always started by lightning.
  3. CThey burn slowly downhill against the wind, occur only at night when humidity is highest, and are confined to areas of dense evergreen forest.
  4. DThey are subsurface peat fires that smoulder underground for months at a time, are unaffected by wind direction because no flame reaches the surface, and occur uniformly through the year wherever organic soils have dried out.

Question 705

[3 marks]Mitigation and adaptation: veldfires
Early burning is one recognised method of preparing a fireguard. What does it involve and why is the timing chosen?
  1. ABurning the strip only once a wildfire is already approaching it, so that the two fires advance towards one another and meet head on at the boundary, where each removes the fuel the other needs and both go out.
  2. BBurning the strip at the height of the dry season in October, when the grass is fully cured so that the strip burns completely in a single pass.
  3. CBurning the strip at the start of the dry season in June or early July while the grass is still partly green, so the fire burns cool and controllable and the strip is already bare before the dangerous season arrives.
  4. DBurning the strip immediately after the first rains in November, when the new growth is green enough to carry a fire that cannot escape.

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