Every card in Maps and place knowledge, Year 8: Africa and plate boundaries
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- The long, steep-sided valley running north to south through East Africa, formed where the land is being pulled apart
The Great Rift Valley
HintIts name says that the ground has split.
WhyIt runs through Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania. Its floor holds a chain of lakes, and volcanoes stand along its edges.
- Nairobi lies close to the Equator, yet its climate is mild, not baking hot. Why?
It is high up, about 1,800 m above sea level
HintLook at where Nairobi sits on a relief map.
WhyAir gets cooler with height, so the highlands of Kenya are much cooler than the coast, even though both are close to the Equator.
- The tropical grassland with scattered trees that covers much of East Africa
Savannah
HintIt has a long dry season and a wet season, and is home to great grazing herds.
WhyThere is too little rain for forest but enough for tall grasses. Wildebeest and zebra follow the rains across it in huge migrations.
- The Maasai of Kenya and Tanzania traditionally move with their cattle across the grasslands. Why do they move?
To find fresh grass and water as the seasons change
HintThe rain does not fall in every place all year.
WhyIn a climate with wet and dry seasons, grazing runs out in one place as it grows in another, so herders follow it.
- Kenya's cool, wet highlands are ideal for which export crop, whose leaves are picked by hand from bushes on the hillsides?
Tea
HintBritain drinks a great deal of it.
WhyThe bushes need steady rain and mild temperatures, which the highlands provide. Kenya is one of the world's largest exporters of it.
- How many African countries are members of the United Nations? (number only)
54
HintA little over fifty.
WhyAfrica has more countries than any other continent, and between them they hold well over a thousand languages.
- The belt of tropical rainforest in central Africa lies in the basin of which river?
The Congo
HintIt shares its name with two countries.
WhyThe region lies on the Equator and is hot and wet all year, and it holds the second-largest rainforest in the world after the Amazon.
- The longest river in Africa, flowing north to the Mediterranean Sea
The Nile
HintAncient Egypt grew up along its banks.
WhyIt crosses the Sahara, and the strip of green along it shows how much of Egypt's farming and settlement depends on its water.
- The type of plate boundary where two plates slide past each other
A conservative (transform) boundary
HintCrust is neither made nor destroyed there, so it is 'saved'.
WhyThe plates stick, strain builds up, and then they jerk free in an earthquake. The San Andreas Fault in California is one.
- The type of plate boundary where two plates move towards each other and one sinks beneath the other
A destructive boundary
HintThink about what happens to the crust of the sinking plate.
WhyWhere an ocean plate meets a continental plate, the denser ocean plate is forced down and melts. This causes earthquakes and explosive volcanoes.
1★ KS3-GEOG-MAP-0027
2★ KS3-GEOG-MAP-0028
3★ KS3-GEOG-MAP-0029
4★ KS3-GEOG-MAP-0030
5★ KS3-GEOG-MAP-0031
6★ KS3-GEOG-MAP-0032
7★ KS3-GEOG-MAP-0033
8★ KS3-GEOG-MAP-0034
9★ KS3-GEOG-MAP-0035
10★ KS3-GEOG-MAP-0036
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