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NZ Scholarship Geography study materials
NZ Scholarship Geography study resources

NZ Scholarship Geography practice questions

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Question 1Geographic concepts and skills

A topographic map has a scale of 1:50,000. A straight-line distance of 6 cm measured between two trig stations on the map represents which ground distance?

  1. 300 kilometres
  2. 3 kilometres Correct answer.
  3. 30 kilometres
  4. 300 metres

Explanation

At a scale of 1:50,000, 1 cm on the map equals 50,000 cm on the ground, which is 500 m. Six centimetres therefore represents 6 × 500 m = 3,000 m, or 3 km.

Question 2Geographic concepts and skills

A GIS analyst needs to represent continuous rainfall totals across a region as a layer that supports cell-by-cell calculation with satellite imagery. Which data model is most suitable?

  1. Attribute table without geometry
  2. Vector point layer
  3. Raster grid layer Correct answer.
  4. Vector line layer

Explanation

Raster data store values in a regular grid of cells, which suits continuous fields such as rainfall and allows overlay and cell-by-cell calculations with other gridded layers. Vector models represent discrete points, lines or polygons and are less suitable for continuous surfaces.

Question 3Geographic concepts and skills

A country records a crude birth rate of 28 per 1,000 and a crude death rate of 9 per 1,000 in a given year. What is its rate of natural increase?

  1. 37 per 1,000
  2. 19%
  3. 1.9% Correct answer.
  4. 0.19%

Explanation

Natural increase is the crude birth rate minus the crude death rate: 28 − 9 = 19 per 1,000. Dividing 19 by 1,000 and multiplying by 100 gives 1.9%.

Question 4Geographic concepts and skills

A regional council wants to map the proportion of the workforce that is unemployed across contiguous wards so that wards with different population sizes can be compared fairly. Which measure and mapping method is most appropriate?

  1. Total number of unemployed people shown on a choropleth map
  2. Unemployment rate shown on an isoline map
  3. Unemployment rate shown on a choropleth map Correct answer.
  4. Total number of unemployed people shown on a dot map

Explanation

A choropleth map uses shading to represent values for administrative areas, and rates normalise for population size so wards with different populations can be compared. Raw totals mainly reflect population size, and isoline maps are suited to continuous surfaces rather than discrete administrative wards.

Question 5Geographic concepts and skills

An environmental geographer is selecting 80 survey sites from a catchment that contains four distinct land-cover classes of unequal area. The sample must include sites from every class in proportion to its area. Which sampling strategy best meets this requirement?

  1. Convenience sampling at accessible road ends
  2. Stratified random sampling Correct answer.
  3. Systematic sampling along a transect
  4. Simple random sampling

Explanation

Stratified random sampling divides the catchment into strata-here the four land-cover classes-and samples randomly within each stratum in proportion to its area. This guarantees representation of every class, unlike simple random or convenience sampling.

Question 6Geographic concepts and skills

In a gravity-model analysis of shopping trips between three towns, which combination of conditions would predict the largest flow of shoppers from one town to another?

  1. Small populations and a long travel time
  2. Large populations and a short travel time Correct answer.
  3. Large populations and a long travel time
  4. Small populations and a short travel time

Explanation

The gravity model predicts interaction as proportional to the product of the two centres' populations and inversely related to distance or travel time. Large populations and short travel time therefore produce the largest predicted flow.

Question 7Geographic concepts and skills

Two neighbouring communities face the same lahar risk from a volcano, yet one adopts evacuation plans and the other does not. Which geographic concept best explains this difference?

  1. Risk perception Correct answer.
  2. Spatial autocorrelation
  3. Distance decay
  4. Environmental determinism

Explanation

Risk perception refers to how people interpret and judge a hazard, including their trust in authorities, past experience and perceived control; these judgements can lead neighbouring communities to respond differently to the same objective hazard. The other concepts describe spatial patterns or environmental causation, not differing interpretations of risk.

Question 8Geographic concepts and skills

A satellite sensor records reflectance in near-infrared and red bands. Which environmental variable is most directly estimated by calculating the Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI)?

  1. Surface elevation
  2. Soil salinity
  3. Vegetation vigour Correct answer.
  4. Air temperature

Explanation

NDVI compares near-infrared and red reflectance: healthy vegetation absorbs red light for photosynthesis and strongly reflects near-infrared, producing high NDVI values. It is therefore used to monitor vegetation vigour and cover rather than elevation, salinity or temperature.

Question 9Geographic concepts and skills

A study of deprivation in a city produces a strong north–south pattern when data are aggregated into five large districts, but the pattern weakens when the same data are aggregated into twenty smaller suburbs. Which issue does this illustrate?

  1. The modifiable areal unit problem Correct answer.
  2. The ecological fallacy in area-based data
  3. Spatial diffusion of deprivation
  4. Distance decay in spatial interaction

Explanation

The modifiable areal unit problem occurs when statistical results change because the size or boundaries of the areal units used for aggregation change, even though the underlying data are the same. The shift from five large districts to twenty smaller suburbs is a boundary and scale effect, not ecological fallacy or distance decay.

Question 10Geographic concepts and skills

A geographer finds that suburbs with a high proportion of recent migrants also have high average household incomes. Which conclusion is valid at the stated level of analysis?

  1. Recent migrants are evenly distributed across all income groups.
  2. Individual recent migrants necessarily earn high incomes.
  3. High income causes people to become recent migrants.
  4. Recent-migrant suburbs have higher average household incomes. Correct answer.

Explanation

At the suburb level, the finding supports only an aggregate association: suburbs with many recent migrants tend to have higher average household incomes. Inferring that every individual migrant is high-income would commit the ecological fallacy, and the data do not establish causation.

Question 11Geographic concepts and skills

When geographers distinguish analytical scale from cartographic scale, analytical scale refers to

  1. the total area of the region selected for study
  2. the ratio between distance on a map and distance on the ground
  3. the spatial extent and resolution at which a phenomenon is studied Correct answer.
  4. the number of people living in a defined territory

Explanation

Analytical scale concerns the spatial extent and resolution of a study, such as whether a process is examined at a neighbourhood, regional or global level. Cartographic scale, by contrast, is the ratio between map distance and ground distance.

Question 12Geographic concepts and skills

Which property is preserved by an equal-area (equivalent) map projection?

  1. the direction of straight lines from the map centre
  2. the relative size of regions Correct answer.
  3. the shape of small islands
  4. the distance between all pairs of points

Explanation

An equal-area projection preserves the relative sizes of regions, so comparisons of area between countries or regions remain valid. It achieves this by distorting shape, direction or distance.

Question 13Geographic concepts and skills

A soil survey records drainage as 'poor', 'imperfect', 'moderate' and 'good'. What level of measurement is this?

  1. Ratio
  2. Nominal
  3. Ordinal Correct answer.
  4. Interval

Explanation

Drainage classes are ordered from poorer to better drainage, but the intervals between classes are not equal or measured. This makes the data ordinal.

Question 14Geographic concepts and skills

According to central place theory, a service with a high threshold and a large range will most likely be located

  1. in every neighbourhood, close to consumers
  2. at the intersection of local streets within each suburb
  3. only in rural settlements with low population density
  4. in a few large, widely spaced centres Correct answer.

Explanation

A high threshold means the service needs a large population to be viable, and a large range means consumers will travel far to reach it. These conditions support only a few large, widely spaced centres.

Question 15Geographic concepts and skills

A geographer wants to represent the volume and direction of daily commuter flows between suburbs. Which cartographic technique is most appropriate?

  1. An isoline map joining all points of equal commuting distance
  2. A flow-line map with line width for commuter volume Correct answer.
  3. A dot-density map placing one dot per commuter
  4. A choropleth map shading suburbs by total population

Explanation

Flow-line maps represent movement between origins and destinations, and line width can be scaled to the volume of commuters. Choropleth, isoline and dot-density maps represent distributions or surfaces rather than directed flows.

Question 16Geographic concepts and skills

A researcher divides a city into 40 wards, randomly selects 8 wards, and then surveys every household within those selected wards. This sampling design is

  1. systematic sampling
  2. stratified random sampling
  3. cluster sampling Correct answer.
  4. simple random sampling

Explanation

Cluster sampling selects whole groups, such as wards, and then surveys all or many individuals within the chosen groups. It differs from stratified sampling, which samples from every stratum.

Question 17Geographic concepts and skills

Which spatial data model stores features as points, lines and polygons defined by explicit coordinates and attributes?

  1. Vector data model Correct answer.
  2. Raster data model
  3. Relational data model
  4. Triangulated irregular network (TIN)

Explanation

The vector data model represents discrete features as points, lines and polygons with explicit coordinates and linked attributes. Raster models use a grid of cells, while TINs model terrain as triangles.

Question 18Geographic concepts and skills

An isochrone map is used to show

  1. the shortest straight-line distance between two selected points
  2. the boundaries of administrative wards
  3. areas reachable within a set travel time Correct answer.
  4. areas sharing the same average income

Explanation

An isochrone connects points that can be reached within the same travel time from a chosen location, so it maps accessibility. It is not a measure of income, straight-line distance or administrative boundaries.

Question 19Geographic concepts and skills

A geographer interpolates soil pH from sample points and wants a method that models spatial autocorrelation and reports prediction uncertainty. Which method is most appropriate?

  1. Inverse distance weighting (IDW)
  2. Thiessen polygons
  3. Nearest-neighbour assignment
  4. Kriging Correct answer.

Explanation

Kriging uses a variogram model to represent spatial autocorrelation and also produces a prediction variance, giving a measure of uncertainty. IDW, Thiessen polygons and nearest-neighbour methods are deterministic and do not provide that error surface.

Question 20Geographic concepts and skills

A geographer suspects that the relationship between household income and car ownership varies across a city rather than being constant. Which technique is designed to test this spatial non-stationarity?

  1. Global ordinary least squares regression
  2. Hierarchical cluster analysis
  3. Geographically weighted regression (GWR) Correct answer.
  4. Principal component analysis

Explanation

Geographically weighted regression estimates local coefficients, allowing relationships such as income and car ownership to vary across space. Global OLS assumes one constant relationship for the whole study area.

Question 21Geographic concepts and skills

On a 1:25,000 topographic map, two points are 4 cm apart. Their spot heights are 240 m and 340 m. What is the average gradient between the points?

  1. 1:10 Correct answer.
  2. 1:4
  3. 1:25
  4. 1:100

Explanation

Four centimetres at 1:25,000 represents 100,000 cm, or 1,000 m, on the ground. The vertical difference is 100 m, so the gradient is 100 m divided by 1,000 m, which is 0.1 or 1:10.

Question 22Geographic concepts and skills

On a Mercator projection, a straight line drawn between two ports at different latitudes represents which navigation line?

  1. A rhumb line of constant bearing Correct answer.
  2. A line of constant latitude
  3. An isochrone, a line of equal travel time
  4. A great circle, the shortest surface route

Explanation

A Mercator projection is conformal, and it plots a line of constant compass bearing, called a rhumb line, as a straight line. Great circles are the shortest routes but appear curved on Mercator except along meridians and the equator.

Question 23Geographic concepts and skills

A council overlays a parcel layer with a flood-zone layer and retains only the parts of parcels that lie inside the flood zone. Which vector overlay operation produces this output?

  1. Dissolve
  2. Intersect Correct answer.
  3. Erase
  4. Union

Explanation

An intersect overlay keeps only the areas that occur in both input layers, so the output contains the parts of parcels inside the flood zone. Union would retain all parcel and flood-zone areas, erase would remove the flood zone, and dissolve would merge adjacent features by attribute.

Question 24Geographic concepts and skills

In a district, 15% of employed residents work in tourism, compared with 10% nationally. What is the tourism location quotient, and what does it indicate?

  1. 1.5, indicating tourism is more concentrated locally than nationally Correct answer.
  2. 5.0, indicating tourism employs five times as many people locally
  3. 1.5, indicating tourism employs 15% of the national workforce
  4. 0.67, indicating tourism is less concentrated locally than nationally

Explanation

The location quotient is the local share divided by the national share: 15 percent divided by 10 percent equals 1.5. A value above 1 shows that tourism is overrepresented locally compared with the national economy.

Question 25Geographic concepts and skills

A nearest neighbour analysis of mapped retail outlets produces a nearest neighbour index of 0.65. What spatial pattern does this value indicate?

  1. Random
  2. Regularly dispersed
  3. Perfectly uniform
  4. Clustered Correct answer.

Explanation

A nearest neighbour index below 1 indicates clustering, and values closer to 0 indicate stronger clustering. A value of 1 would be consistent with a random pattern, while values above 1 indicate dispersion.

Question 26Geographic concepts and skills

A global Moran's I statistic for household income across census tracts is +0.62. What does this result most strongly indicate?

  1. High-income tracts are randomly mixed with low-income tracts
  2. The tract boundaries have no effect on the measured pattern
  3. Income is evenly distributed across all tracts
  4. Neighbouring tracts tend to have similar income values Correct answer.

Explanation

A positive global Moran's I indicates positive spatial autocorrelation, meaning nearby tracts tend to have similar values. High-income tracts therefore cluster near high-income tracts and low-income tracts near low-income tracts more than a random arrangement would produce.

Question 27Geographic concepts and skills

A geographer numbers every house on a street and selects houses 5, 15, 25, 35 and so on after choosing the first house at random. Which sampling method is being used?

  1. Systematic sampling Correct answer.
  2. Simple random sampling
  3. Stratified random sampling
  4. Cluster sampling

Explanation

Systematic sampling selects units at a fixed interval after a random start, as with every tenth house. It differs from simple random, stratified and cluster sampling because the interval, not a fresh random draw for each unit, governs selection.

Question 28Geographic concepts and skills

A map of the world redraws each country so that its area is proportional to its total carbon dioxide emissions rather than to its land area. What type of map is this?

  1. Isopleth map
  2. Dot density map
  3. Choropleth map
  4. Cartogram Correct answer.

Explanation

A cartogram deliberately distorts geographic area so that area represents a chosen variable, here carbon dioxide emissions. Choropleth, isopleth and dot density maps retain normal or approximate geographic space and encode data through shading, lines or dots.

Question 29Geographic concepts and skills

In a polygon contiguity matrix, which pair of polygons is connected under queen contiguity but not under rook contiguity?

  1. Polygons that share a long boundary segment
  2. Polygons meeting only at one vertex Correct answer.
  3. Polygons that share the same attribute value
  4. Polygons separated by a narrow river

Explanation

Queen contiguity treats polygons as neighbours if they share either an edge or a vertex. Rook contiguity requires a shared edge, so polygons meeting only at one point are queen neighbours but not rook neighbours.

Question 30Geographic concepts and skills

A spatial analysis of deforestation measures only the area inside a bounded reserve, ignoring forest patterns just outside it. What problem is most likely to arise?

  1. Edge effects, from processes truncated at the boundary Correct answer.
  2. Ecological fallacy, because reserve-level data are applied to individuals
  3. Sampling error, because every tree is measured
  4. Scale distortion, because the map projection changes area

Explanation

Edge effects occur when a study boundary truncates spatial processes, so conditions and interactions just outside the area are omitted. This can bias estimates near the reserve boundary because neighbouring forest areas influence deforestation patterns inside it.

Question 31Geographic concepts and skills

A topographic map is published at a representative fraction of 1:50,000. What does this scale mean?

  1. One unit measured on the map represents 50,000 of the same units on the ground. Correct answer.
  2. One centimetre on the map represents 50,000 metres on the ground.
  3. Fifty thousand map sheets are needed to cover the whole country.
  4. The map covers an area 50,000 times larger than its own paper area.

Explanation

A representative fraction compares map distance to ground distance in the same units, so 1:50,000 means 1 cm on the map equals 50,000 cm, or 500 m, on the ground. It is a ratio, not a statement about paper area or sheet numbers.

Question 32Geographic concepts and skills

A land-use survey records each parcel as 'residential', 'industrial', 'rural' or 'recreational'. Which level of measurement do these categories represent?

  1. Interval
  2. Ratio
  3. Nominal Correct answer.
  4. Ordinal

Explanation

Nominal data consist of named categories that have no inherent order or numerical distance between them. Land-use classes such as residential and industrial are simply different labels, so they are nominal.

Question 33Geographic concepts and skills

In a raster GIS, a land-cover layer has a cell size of 25 metres. What does this cell size represent?

  1. The ground area represented by each pixel. Correct answer.
  2. The coordinate system used to georeference the layer.
  3. The maximum number of classes the layer can contain.
  4. The number of attributes stored in each cell.

Explanation

Raster cell size defines spatial resolution: each pixel represents a square patch of ground, here 25 m by 25 m. It does not set attribute counts, coordinate systems or the number of land-cover classes.

Question 34Geographic concepts and skills

A researcher has a complete list of residential addresses in a city and wants each household to have a known, non-zero chance of selection. Which sampling method best meets this requirement?

  1. Quota sampling by suburb
  2. Simple random sampling from the address list Correct answer.
  3. Purposive sampling of known community leaders
  4. Convenience sampling at shopping centres

Explanation

Simple random sampling gives every listed household a known and equal probability of selection, which supports statistical inference. Quota, convenience and purposive methods rely on non-random choices and do not provide a known selection probability.

Question 35Geographic concepts and skills

A geographer maps median household income by census tract and wants each class to contain the same number of tracts. Which classification method should be used?

  1. Natural breaks (Jenks)
  2. Equal interval
  3. Standard deviation
  4. Quantile Correct answer.

Explanation

Quantile classification places the same number of observations in each class, so each income class contains an equal count of census tracts. Equal interval uses equal value ranges, natural breaks minimises within-class variance, and standard deviation classes are built around the mean.

Question 36Geographic concepts and skills

A cartographer reduces the detail of a complex coastline by removing minor indentations while keeping the overall shape. Which generalization operation is being applied?

  1. Aggregation
  2. Simplification Correct answer.
  3. Exaggeration
  4. Displacement

Explanation

Simplification reduces the number of points or details in a line while preserving its essential form, which is exactly what removing small coastal indentations does. Aggregation combines features, displacement shifts symbols to avoid overlap, and exaggeration enlarges features for emphasis.

Question 37Geographic concepts and skills

A geographer draws a 500 m zone around each school and counts the residential parcels that fall inside these zones. Which pair of GIS operations is being used?

  1. Digitising and topology building
  2. Spatial interpolation and reclassification
  3. Geocoding and network analysis
  4. Buffering and overlay (point-in-polygon) analysis Correct answer.

Explanation

Buffering creates the 500 m zones around the schools, and an overlay or point-in-polygon operation then identifies parcels inside those zones. The other options describe address matching, interpolation, or data capture rather than proximity counting.

Question 38Geographic concepts and skills

Tobler's first law of geography is best summarised by which statement?

  1. Spatial patterns are random unless a process creates them.
  2. Nearby things are more related than distant things. Correct answer.
  3. All places are connected by flows of equal strength.
  4. Distance has no effect once transport technology improves.

Explanation

Tobler's first law states that everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things. It underpins concepts such as spatial autocorrelation and distance decay.

Question 39Geographic concepts and skills

A map projection is described as conformal. Which property does it preserve at every point?

  1. Local angles and the shapes of small areas Correct answer.
  2. True distance along all straight lines
  3. True area for all regions
  4. True direction from a single central point

Explanation

A conformal projection preserves local angles, so small shapes are shown correctly, although area becomes distorted away from the standard line. Equal-area projections preserve area, equidistant projections preserve selected distances, and azimuthal projections preserve directions from a centre.

Question 40Geographic concepts and skills

A standard deviational ellipse of burglary locations is elongated from south-west to north-east. What does this most strongly suggest?

  1. Burglaries show a directional trend along a SW–NE axis. Correct answer.
  2. Burglaries are concentrated only at the exact centre of the ellipse.
  3. Burglaries are uniformly distributed across the study area.
  4. Burglaries are randomly located with no spatial pattern.

Explanation

A standard deviational ellipse summarises the dispersion and orientation of points; an elongated shape indicates that the distribution is stretched along that axis. Here the long axis runs SW–NE, suggesting a directional trend rather than uniformity or randomness.

Question 41Geographic concepts and skills

A world map is designed to compare the total land area of countries. Which projection property must be preserved for this comparison to be valid?

  1. Bearing
  2. Shape
  3. Distance
  4. Area Correct answer.

Explanation

An equal-area projection preserves the relative size of areas, so the apparent size of each country is proportional to its true land area. Conformal projections preserve shape but distort area, and no flat projection can preserve every spatial property at once.

Question 42Geographic concepts and skills

Which type of region is defined by people's shared perceptions and has no precise, official boundary?

  1. Vernacular region Correct answer.
  2. Formal region
  3. Administrative region
  4. Functional region

Explanation

A vernacular region, also called a perceptual region, exists in people's mental maps and has fuzzy boundaries. Formal regions are defined by measurable uniformity, while functional regions are organised around flows or interactions.

Question 43Geographic concepts and skills

A researcher divides a city into suburbs, randomly selects five suburbs, and then surveys every household in those five suburbs. Which sampling method is being used?

  1. Systematic sampling
  2. Stratified sampling
  3. Simple random sampling
  4. Cluster sampling Correct answer.

Explanation

Cluster sampling selects whole groups, or clusters, and then samples all or some units within the chosen groups. It differs from stratified sampling, where units are randomly selected within every stratum rather than only within selected groups.

Question 44Geographic concepts and skills

A reserve is shown on a 1:25,000 map as a rectangle measuring 4 cm by 2 cm. What is the actual area of the reserve in hectares?

  1. 50 ha Correct answer.
  2. 37.5 ha
  3. 25 ha
  4. 12.5 ha

Explanation

At 1:25,000, 1 cm on the map represents 250 m on the ground, so the rectangle is 1,000 m by 500 m. Its area is 500,000 m², which equals 50 hectares.

Question 45Geographic concepts and skills

A geographer maps the number of dengue cases by district. To compare districts of very different population sizes fairly, which transformation is most appropriate?

  1. Convert case counts to cases per 1,000 residents Correct answer.
  2. Classify the counts using equal intervals
  3. Display the counts as proportional symbols
  4. Map the raw case counts without change

Explanation

Choropleth comparisons of raw counts are misleading when population sizes differ, because a large population can produce more cases even if its risk is low. Converting counts to a rate adjusts for the population at risk and allows fair comparison between districts.

Question 46Geographic concepts and skills

A GIS builds a continuous rainfall surface from rain-gauge points using inverse distance weighting (IDW). Which assumption is central to this method?

  1. Rainfall is constant across the whole map
  2. Rainfall changes only at administrative boundaries
  3. Points closer to an unknown location have more influence on its estimated value Correct answer.
  4. All gauges have an equal influence everywhere

Explanation

IDW estimates an unknown value as a weighted average of nearby observations, with weights decreasing as distance increases. It assumes spatial autocorrelation, meaning nearby points are more similar than distant ones.

Question 47Geographic concepts and skills

Two polygon layers, A and B, are combined using a vector union. What does the resulting layer contain?

  1. Only the boundary lines shared by A and B
  2. Only the areas of A that fall outside B
  3. All areas from A and B, with attributes combined where they overlap Correct answer.
  4. Only the areas where A and B overlap

Explanation

A union retains all polygons from both input layers and creates combined attributes in the overlapping areas. An intersect would keep only the overlap, while a clip or erase would remove parts of one layer.

Question 48Geographic concepts and skills

A satellite sensor images the same location every 16 days. What does this interval describe?

  1. Radiometric resolution
  2. Spectral resolution
  3. Temporal resolution Correct answer.
  4. Spatial resolution

Explanation

Temporal resolution is the frequency with which a sensor revisits and records the same area. Spatial resolution refers to pixel size, spectral resolution to the number and width of wavelength bands, and radiometric resolution to sensitivity in detecting differences in radiance.

Question 49Geographic concepts and skills

A study finds that neighbourhoods with higher average incomes also have higher average car ownership. The author concludes that richer individuals own more cars. Which inferential error does this illustrate?

  1. Atomistic fallacy
  2. Modifiable areal unit problem
  3. Sampling error
  4. Ecological fallacy Correct answer.

Explanation

The ecological fallacy is drawing conclusions about individuals from aggregate group-level relationships. A neighbourhood average can conceal wide variation among individuals, so the area-level association does not prove an individual-level relationship.

Question 50Geographic concepts and skills

A city's index of deprivation produces different maps when calculated from census meshblocks rather than from larger wards. Which issue does this most directly illustrate?

  1. Spatial interpolation error
  2. Edge effect
  3. Ecological fallacy
  4. Modifiable areal unit problem Correct answer.

Explanation

The modifiable areal unit problem occurs when statistical results change with the size or boundaries of the areal units used for aggregation. Moving from meshblocks to wards changes both scale and zoning, so the mapped pattern can shift.