RAS question
The Gobi Desert, one of the largest deserts in Asia, is located in:
Correct answer: (A) Mongolia and northern China.
The Gobi Desert is located across southern Mongolia and northern China.
Explanation
The Gobi is a desert and semidesert region of Central Asia that stretches across large parts of Mongolia and China, which is why the correct location is Mongolia and northern China. It lies across southern Mongolia and northern China and has an area of about 13 lakh sq km; Encyclopaedia Britannica gives the same scale as about 1,300,000 sq km. This is also not a typical sand-sea image: Encyclopaedia Britannica notes that much of the Gobi is bare rock, and it is largely rocky and gravelly rather than sandy. Its cold-desert character, rain-shadow setting, extreme temperature range, fossil importance and Silk Road association all make it a major physical-geography location, but the exam hinge here is its transboundary position in Asia.
Why the other options are wrong
- (B) Saudi Arabia is associated here with the Rub al Khali, not the Gobi, so it points to a different Asian desert system.
- (C) India is linked in the question data with the Thar Desert, whereas the Gobi is placed across Mongolia and northern China.
- (D) Central Australia refers to a different desert region and does not match the Gobi's Central Asian location across Mongolia and China.
Concept
This tests the world geography habit of matching major deserts with their exact regional location, not just their continent. It recurs in RAS because deserts are standard map-based markers for climate regions, rain-shadow effects and transboundary physical features.