OCR A-Level Geography sample questions and answers (H481)
Guide overview All 15 topics Sample questions Papers and weighting Look inside Questions and answers
45 sample questions and answers
Taken from every topic of OCR A-Level Geography, specification H481. The full guide has 3,740.
Component 01
Coastal Landscapes
260 questions in the guide, across 17 subtopics. More from this topic
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The coastal system: inputs, outputs and flows of energy and material
State two outputs from a coastal landscape system.
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Sediment carried out into deep water beyond the system, and wave energy dissipated as waves break on the shore. -
Winds, fetch and the generation of waves
What is meant by wind frequency at a coast?
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How often the wind blows from each direction over a given period of time. -
Tides, tidal range and ocean currents
Define tidal range.
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The vertical difference in sea level between high tide and low tide.
Component 01
Glaciated Landscapes
267 questions in the guide, across 17 subtopics. More from this topic
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The glacier system: inputs, stores, flows and outputs
What is a store in a glaciated landscape system?
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A place where matter or energy is held for a period of time, such as the glacier ice itself, a snowfield, a moraine or a proglacial lake. -
Climate, latitude and altitude as controls on glaciation
Why does the seasonal distribution of precipitation matter as much as the annual total?
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Precipitation falling as winter snow adds to accumulation, while the same amount arriving as summer rain warms the surface and speeds up ablation. -
Firn, glacier ice, valley glaciers and ice sheets
Why does dense glacier ice appear blue?
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Bubble-free ice absorbs the longer red wavelengths of light and scatters the shorter blue wavelengths back to the observer.
Component 01
Dryland Landscapes
255 questions in the guide, across 18 subtopics. More from this topic
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Dryland landscape systems: inputs, stores, flows and outputs
Give four sediment stores found in a desert landscape.
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Dune fields, alluvial fans, playa deposits and the regolith mantling hillslopes are all sediment stores. -
Rainfall, pressure belts and the global pattern of aridity
Which two latitude bands contain most of the world's hot deserts?
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Most hot deserts lie roughly between 15° and 30° north and between 15° and 30° south of the Equator. -
Relief, aspect and desert microclimates
How does slope angle influence runoff and infiltration in a dryland?
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Steep slopes shed water rapidly as overland flow with little time for it to soak in, so both moisture and sediment become concentrated at the foot of the slope.
Component 01
Earth’s Life Support Systems
271 questions in the guide, across 17 subtopics. More from this topic
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Water and carbon as the foundations of life on Earth
Name the three sectors of human water use in order of the volume they withdraw.
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Agriculture is much the largest at roughly 70% of withdrawals, then industry at about 20%, then domestic use for drinking, cooking, washing and sanitation at around 10%. -
Inputs and outputs of the water cycle: precipitation, snowmelt and evapotranspiration
What does ablation mean when applied to snow and ice?
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Ablation is the total loss of snow and ice by melting, sublimation, evaporation and calving. -
Evaporation, transpiration, condensation and the causes of rainfall
What is the dew point?
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The dew point is the temperature at which air becomes saturated, so that any further cooling forces water vapour to condense.
Component 02
Changing Spaces; Making Places
276 questions in the guide, across 18 subtopics. More from this topic
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The characteristics that shape a place profile
Give three indicators of the socio-economic character of a place.
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Occupational structure, average household income and housing tenure. -
Past and present connections, and the scales that embed a place
How is a place embedded at the regional scale?
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Through commuting into a nearby city, catchment areas for hospitals, colleges and shopping, regional transport networks, and membership of regional bodies such as a combined authority. -
Space, place and the effects of time-space compression
Why is place a difficult concept to define precisely?
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Places have no fixed boundaries, exist at several scales at once, change continuously and mean different things to different people, so no single objective definition can capture them.
Component 02
Trade in the Contemporary World
174 questions in the guide, across 12 subtopics. More from this topic
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Merchandise, services and capital flows
Distinguish between visible and invisible trade.
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Visible trade is trade in physical goods, while invisible trade is trade in services and other intangible earnings such as interest and profits. -
Global trade patterns: inter-regional and intra-regional flows
Why do oil flows produce a distinctive pattern on a map of world trade?
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Oil reserves are concentrated in a few exporting regions such as the Middle East, Russia and North America, so it moves in long, largely one-directional flows to consuming regions in Europe and Asia. -
Trade as a driver of growth, stability and development
What is the multiplier effect of an export industry?
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Money earned by exporters is respent on local wages, suppliers and services, so each unit of export income generates further rounds of spending, income and jobs in the local economy.
Component 02
Global Migration
159 questions in the guide, across 12 subtopics. More from this topic
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The global migrant population: size, composition and direction of flow
The world's migrant population has more than tripled since 1970 while total world population has roughly doubled. What does that comparison show?
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It shows migration is growing faster than population, so a rising share of humanity now lives outside its country of birth. -
Inter-regional and intra-regional flows, and the world's major migration corridors
In the United Arab Emirates, roughly what share of the population was born abroad?
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Around 88%, one of the highest proportions of any country in the world. -
Migration as a driver of stability, growth and development
How does the movement of people also move technology and ideas?
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Returning and connected migrants transfer skills, business practices, technologies and political expectations acquired abroad back to their home countries.
Component 02
Human Rights
147 questions in the guide, across 11 subtopics. More from this topic
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The idea of human rights and its legal foundations
State how many articles the Universal Declaration of Human Rights contains.
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It contains 30 articles. -
Norms, intervention and geopolitics
Why do some governments argue that development should come before political freedoms?
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They argue that raising incomes and keeping order must come first and that liberties can follow later, a position used to justify restricting free speech, assembly and opposition parties. -
Forced labour and modern slavery
Explain why forced labour is not confined to low income countries.
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More than half of all forced labour occurs in upper middle and high income countries, where demand for cheap labour, the recruitment of migrants through debt, and long subcontracted supply chains create the conditions for it.
Component 02
Power and Borders
168 questions in the guide, across 12 subtopics. More from this topic
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States, nations and the sovereign control of territory
Explain how a nation differs from a state.
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A state is a legal and territorial unit with a government and recognised borders, while a nation is a community held together by shared identity, so a nation can exist without a state and a state can contain several nations. -
Norms, intervention and geopolitics
What does the Responsibility to Protect establish?
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It establishes that every state must protect its own population from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity, and that the international community should act where a state manifestly fails to do so. -
Transnational corporations and economic sovereignty
What is a tax haven?
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A tax haven is a jurisdiction with very low or zero corporate taxation and strong financial secrecy, used to reduce tax liabilities that would otherwise be paid elsewhere.
Component 03
Climate Change
323 questions in the guide, across 22 subtopics. More from this topic
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Reconstructing past climates from natural archives
What is a varve, and why is it useful to a climate scientist?
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A varve is the pair of sediment layers laid down in a lake in a single year, coarse and pale in summer and fine and dark in winter, so counting varves dates a lake sequence year by year. -
Continental drift and volcanic activity as drivers of climate
What is a large igneous province, and why does it matter to climate?
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It is an enormous outpouring of basaltic lava over a geologically short interval, and the CO₂ it releases can drive rapid warming, which is why such events coincide with major mass extinctions. -
Warming of the surface, atmosphere and oceans since the late 19th century
Which has risen faster, night-time minimum or daytime maximum temperatures?
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Night-time minimum temperatures have risen faster, narrowing the daily temperature range, which is what stronger longwave trapping would be expected to produce.
Component 03
Disease Dilemmas
271 questions in the guide, across 18 subtopics. More from this topic
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Ways of classifying disease, and the epidemic to pandemic scale
Give an example of a communicable disease that is not contagious, and explain why it is not.
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Malaria is communicable but not contagious, because it passes from person to person only through the bite of an infected Anopheles mosquito and never by contact. -
Disease diffusion, the Hägerstrand model and the barriers that slow it
Which geographer devised the four-stage model of diffusion used in disease geography?
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Torsten Hägerstrand, a Swedish geographer working in the 1950s. -
Mosquitoes, vectors and the seasonal rhythm of outbreaks
Name the vector of sleeping sickness in Africa.
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The tsetse fly.
Component 03
Exploring Oceans
346 questions in the guide, across 22 subtopics. More from this topic
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The size and spread of the world's oceans
Name the five named oceans recognised today.
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They are the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Southern and Arctic Oceans. -
Salinity and temperature through the water column
Describe the vertical temperature structure of a tropical ocean.
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A warm, wind-mixed surface layer of fairly uniform temperature reaches to about 200 m, below which the thermocline brings a rapid fall in temperature to around 1,000 m, and beneath that lies a cold deep layer of about 2 to 4°C. -
Light, warmth and nutrients as limits on ocean life
Name the main nutrients that limit phytoplankton growth in the ocean.
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Nitrate, phosphate, silicate and dissolved iron are the nutrients that most often limit growth.
Component 03
Future of Food
347 questions in the guide, across 22 subtopics. More from this topic
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Food security and its three pillars
Explain how a country can have plenty of food available and still have hungry citizens.
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Availability only puts food inside the country, so if households lack the income to buy it or live far from any market the access pillar fails and they go hungry. -
Shifting patterns of food security between and within countries
Explain why food security can be unequal within a single household.
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Where food is short it is often shared according to status, so women and girls may eat last and least while earning members are fed first. -
Types of farming: intensive, extensive, subsistence and commercial
Explain why intensive and subsistence are not opposites.
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They describe different things, because intensity measures the level of input per hectare while subsistence and commercial describe who the output is for, so intensive subsistence rice growing and extensive commercial ranching both exist.
Component 03
Hazardous Earth
361 questions in the guide, across 24 subtopics. More from this topic
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The Earth's internal structure and the global pattern of plates
Why is the inner core solid when it is hotter than the liquid outer core?
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The pressure at the centre of the Earth is so great that it raises the melting point of iron above the temperature there, so the inner core stays solid. -
Divergent boundaries and the landforms of the mid-ocean ridges
Why does a mid-ocean ridge stand higher than the ocean floor on either side?
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The crust at the ridge is newly formed and still hot, so it is less dense and more buoyant, and as it cools and contracts away from the ridge it becomes denser and sinks. -
Magma chemistry, viscosity and explosive volcanism at subduction zones
Which magma type is typical of subduction-zone volcanoes?
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Andesitic magma, with an intermediate silica content of roughly 57 to 63%.
Component 01, Component 02, Component 03
Geographical Skills
115 questions in the guide, across 7 subtopics. More from this topic
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Geographical data, its types and the ethics of using it
Give an example of crowd-sourced mapping being used after a disaster.
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After the 2010 Haiti earthquake, volunteers used the Ushahidi platform to map text messages sent by survivors and used OpenStreetMap to map damaged roads and camps, helping aid agencies locate where help was needed. -
Geographical data, its types and the ethics of using it
Explain one socio-political implication of the categories used to collect data about communities.
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Whoever designs a survey decides which groups exist, so a community with no category of its own becomes statistically invisible and finds it harder to claim funding or services, which is why Gypsy or Irish Traveller was added to the census of England and Wales only in 2011. -
Collecting data: sampling, measurement error and digital devices
Describe stratified sampling.
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The population is divided into sub-groups and each is sampled in proportion to its share of the whole, so if 60% of an alluvial fan is gravel and 40% is sand, 60% of the sample points are placed on the gravel.
OCR A-Level Geography Active Recall Guide
The other 3,695 questions, with the answers printed after each section.