Deck 14: Australia and Oceania

Question 1

What event sets off the process that creates an atoll?

A)rifting
B)earthquake
C)volcanic eruption
D)nuclear explosion
E)erosion

Answer 1

C

Question 2

What causes a tsunami?

A)climate change
B)a monsoon
C)an offshore earthquake
D)a volcano
E)orographic precipitation

Answer 2

C

Question 3

An atoll typically has all of the following characteristics, EXCEPT

A)a barrier reef
B)a high central peak.
C)a lagoon in its center.
D)a fringing coral reef.
E)soil formed from coral.

Answer 3

B

Question 4

What caused the dramatic decline in Guam's native bird species?

A)the thinning of their eggshells and the subsequent death of their young as a result of heavy DDT use on the island in the 1970s
B)radiation poisoning caused by nuclear tests of the United States and France
C)the accidental introduction of the non-native brown tree snake
D)the elimination by humans of its food supply
E)climatic change in the region

Question 5

Which country in Australia and Oceania is one of the world's most densely populated?

A)Fiji
B)Australia
C)Tonga
D)Tuvalu
E)New Zealand

Question 6

Which of the following areas of Australia/Oceania has NOT faced widespread environmental issues as a result of mining?

A)New Caledonia
B)Papua New Guinea
C)Nauru
D)Australia
E)Hawaii

Question 7

What land form dominates much of New Zealand?

A)volcanic mountains
B)lush tropical rainforest
C)eroded sedimentary formations
D)wide plains
E)deserts

Question 8

Where is the Great Barrier Reef located?

A)off the west coast of Australia
B)along Australia's southern coast
C)off the southwestern coast of Australia
D)off the northeastern coast of Australia
E)along Australia's southeastern coast

Question 9

The two largest cities in Australia are

A)Sydney and Melbourne
B)Sydney and Perth
C)Brisbane and Melbourne
D)Melbourne and Perth
E)Adelaide and Perth

Question 10

Tuvalu, Kiribati, and the Marshall Islands are already experiencing disastrous flooding related to global climate change. What has been the response of the people on these islands?

A)They have built polders patterned after those found in the Netherlands.
B)The islands have banded together into a strong political union lobbying for a global solution to climate change.
C)All three have instituted a policy of transmigration, encouraging citizens to move to the center of their island countries.
D)Scientists on these islands have worked together to build a highly advanced sea wall.
E)They have done nothing.

Question 11

High islands

A)have a volcanic heritage
B)are built from coral reefs.
C)include the Marshall Islands, Tuvalu and Kiribati
D)usually result from the collision of two tectonic plates.
E)have no relationship to volcanoes.

Question 12

What is the largest country (in terms of land area as well as population)in the region encompassing the Oceania region?

A)Solomon Islands
B)Fiji
C)Vanuatu
D)Australia
E)New Zealand

Question 13

What destroyed the Bikini Atoll?

A)a traditional missile
B)excessive logging
C)an earthquake
D)a hurricane
E)a U.S. nuclear test

Question 14

What is the approximate population of Australia?

A)15 million
B)5 million
C)24 million
D)13 million
E)33 million

Question 15

What type of animals are most closely associated with Australia?

A)dinosaurs (fossils, of course)
B)birds
C)mammals
D)marsupials
E)amphibians

Question 16

Which exotic animal, introduced in Australia, reached plague proportions, and was finally brought under control only after the purposeful introduction of a disease that affected only this particular introduced species?

A)camels
B)goats
C)dogs
D)wallabies
E)rabbits

Question 17

What is the "Outback"?

A)the many islands of the South Pacific
B)New Zealand's mountainous pasture lands
C)a trendy neighborhood in Sydney, Australia
D)Australia's huge, dry interior
E)the name that Australians give to Tasmania

Question 18

Which part of the Australia/Oceania region receives the LEAST amount of precipitation?

A)the largest of the Marshall Islands
B)the northeast coast of New Zealand
C)the interior of Australia
D)anywhere in Samoa
E)the mid-slopes of the 13,000-foot-plus volcanoes of the island of Hawaii

Question 19

Which of the following is NOT located in Australia?

A)the Kimberly Plateau
B)the Western Plateau
C)the Great Dividing Range
D)the Macdonnell Range
E)the Southern Alps

Question 20

Which of the following trio of factors influences the climates of New Zealand?

A)coral reefs, the moderating effects of the Pacific Ocean and rivers
B)latitude, the moderating effects of the Pacific Ocean and proximity to local mountain ranges
C)rivers, latitude and the moderating effects of the Pacific Ocean
D)latitude, coral reefs and rivers
E)rivers, latitude and proximity to local mountain ranges

Question 21

What is the second-most populous country in the Australia/Oceania region?

A)Papua New Guinea
B)Nauru
C)New Zealand
D)Australia
E)Fiji

Question 22

The Aboriginal population numbered approximately upon European conquest?

A)1 million
B)750,000
C)200,000
D)300,000
E)800,000

Question 23

Which of the following statements is TRUE regarding the population pyramids of Australia and the Solomon Islands?

A)Women have more children in Australia than do women in the Solomon Islands.
B)Australia has a younger population than the Solomon Islands.
C)Australia is growing faster than The Solomon Islands.
D)The Solomon Islands are growing faster than Australia.
E)The Solomon Islands and Australia are growing at roughly the same rate.

Question 24

What percent of the population of New Zealand lives on the North Island?

A)60%
B)25%
C)70%
D)50%
E)10%

Question 25

What types of settlements are found within rural settlements in New Guinea?

A)fishing villages
B)shifting cultivation (swidden agriculture)and intercropping
C)commercial sheep farming
D)commercial plantation agriculture
E)commercial dairying

Question 26

In the early days of its colonization, Britain used Australia as a

A)plantation.
B)source of natural resources.
C)source of slaves.
D)prison colony.
E)tourist destination.

Question 27

Hawaii

A)is a possession of Japan.
B)currently has a white-majority population
C)has declared Pidgin English its official language.
D)closed itself to outside influence for most of the nineteenth century.
E)is an ethnic mosaic of cultures, with people of Asian ancestry comprising a narrow majority of the population

Question 28

Which of the following has the smallest percent urban population?

A)Papua New Guinea
B)Guam
C)New Zealand
D)Fiji
E)Australia

Question 29

The Aboriginal population constitutes roughly what percentage of the population of contemporary Australia?

A)1%
B)3%
C)33%
D)13%
E)70%

Question 30

Viticulture refers to the growing of what crop?

A)apples
B)grapes
C)kiwi fruit
D)tomatoes
E)cut flowers

Question 31

By approximately what year was Australia settled by Aborigines?

A)by 1200 BCE
B)by 2500 BCE
C)by 200 BCE
D)by 1200 CE
E)by 400 CE

Question 32

Where did Australia's Aborigine population originate?

A)Polynesia
B)New Zealand
C)East Asia
D)Latin America
E)Southeast Asia

Question 33

In which country are Maoris the indigenous people?

A)Vanuatu
B)Solomon Islands
C)Fiji
D)Australia
E)New Zealand

Question 34

Today, what percentage of Aboriginals live in urban areas?

A)90%
B)10%
C)25%
D)70%
E)35%

Question 35

In what year did Hawaii gain statehood into the United States?

A)1898
B)1945
C)1959
D)1909
E)1991

Question 36

In what part of Australia do most of its people live?

A)northwest
B)northeast
C)southwest
D)the Outback
E)southeast

Question 37

Which nation forcibly annexed the Hawaiian Islands in 1898?

A)United States
B)Japan
C)United Kingdom
D)Russia
E)China

Question 38

Where did European colonization of Australia and Oceania begin?

A)Fiji
B)Australia
C)New Zealand's North Island
D)the Marshall Islands
E)the Cook Islands

Question 39

When Europeans arrived in Australia, what livelihood was most important to the Aborigines?

A)plantation agriculture
B)pastoral nomadism
C)hunting and gathering
D)fishing
E)swidden

Question 40

Of the following places in Australia/Oceania, which was the first to be settled by humans?

A)Australia
B)New Zealand
C)Cook Islands
D)Fiji
E)Hawaii

Question 41

What is the cultural origin of the majority of Australia's population?

A)United States
B)East Asia (China, Japan, Korea)
C)British Isles (England, Scotland, Ireland)
D)South Asia (India, Pakistan)
E)Aboriginal

Question 42

New Caledonia has close political ties to

A)Australia
B)United Kingdom
C)France
D)New Zealand
E)United States

Question 43

The oldest two independent states in the region are

A)New Caledonia and Papua New Guinea
B)Palau and the Solomon Islands
C)Fiji and the Marshall Islands
D)Kiribati and Tuvalu
E)Australia and New Zealand

Question 44

What was the purpose of the White Australia Policy?

A)to encourage Australians of European descent to migrate from Australia's densely settled east coast to the more sparsely settled interior and west coast
B)It was an ethnic isolationist policy established by the Australian government, which sought to place the country's entire aboriginal population on reservation-like holdings in the far western portion of the country.
C)to promote immigration of (white)North Americans and Europeans to Australia at the expense of non-white groups
D)to clean up the country's white sand beaches, which had been seriously polluted by mining
E)to promote the emigration of Australians who were of European descent to other nations in the South Pacific

Question 45

What percent of Australia's current population is foreign-born?

A)2%
B)50%
C)10%
D)25%
E)5%

Question 46

What country has seen its influence in Oceania grow considerably in the last decade?

A)the Philippines
B)France
C)Great Britain
D)China
E)India

Question 47

Why are Maori land claims more contentious in New Zealand than are Aboriginal claims in Australia?

A)Maori have threatened violence and have long been unwilling to compromise
B)Aboriginal claims in Australia are strictly for ceremonial places, such as cemeteries and sacred sites
C)Maori intend to build heavy industrial plants on land they claim as their own
D)New Zealand has a long history of ignoring all Maori land claims
E)Maori constitute a larger proportion of the population and their land claims are more valuable than Aboriginal claims in Australia

Question 48

Which of the following places is NOT a sovereign and independent state as of 2016?

A)Tuvalu
B)Kiribati
C)Papua New Guinea
D)New Caledonia
E)Fiji

Question 49

In which part of Australia will one most likely find indigenous languages spoken?

A)the northern region and interior
B)the west coast
C)the southern coast
D)Tasmania
E)Sydney and Melbourne

Question 50

Papua New Guinea had been a colony of which nation?

A)United States
B)Australia
C)Japan
D)United Kingdom
E)Indonesia

Question 51

What is the situation today between indigenous Fijians and Indo-Fijians in Fiji?

A)The Indo-Fijians have enslaved the indigenous Fijians.
B)The indigenous Fijians have enslaved the Indo-Fijians.
C)Ethnic tensions exist between the two groups.
D)The two groups coexist peacefully.
E)Intermarriage between the two groups is common.

Question 52

The highlands of which island are home to more than one thousand languages?

A)New Guinea
B)Tasmania
C)New Zealand
D)New Caledonia
E)Fiji

Question 53

The Indian laborers who came to Fiji in the 19th century practice

A)Catholicism
B)Protestantism
C)Buddhism
D)Hinduism
E)Islam

Question 54

Which is a strategy employed by China to exert its influence over selected nations of Oceania?

A)holding major Chinese naval drills in the territorial waters of island nations in a threatening show of force
B)the establishment of Chinese military bases across Micronesia and Polynesia
C)imposing a trade embargo upon those nations who do not purchase Chinese products
D)using the carrot of economic aid in return for support of Chinese policies in the region (such as in the form of UN votes in support of China)
E)offering citizens of Pacific island nations free university tuition and job opportunities within China

Question 55

What was the main purpose of the Native Title Bill, which became law in Australia in 1993?

A)to establish an aboriginal state in the northeastern portion of Western Australia
B)to grant Australia's aboriginal population the state of Tasmania
C)to grant Australia's aboriginal population the right to establish gambling operations on their lands
D)to compensate Australia's aboriginal population for lands they had given up
E)to restrain the autonomy of Australia's aboriginal population

Question 56

Most native languages of Oceania belong to which language family?

A)Austronesian
B)Pidgin English (Pijin)
C)Solomon
D)Papuan
E)Indo-European

Question 57

The Maori account for approximately what percentage of New Zealand's population?

A)30%
B)1%
C)22%
D)15%
E)8%

Question 58

In recent decades, the majority of immigrants coming to Australia have come from

A)Asia
B)New Zealand
C)islands in Oceania
D)the United States
E)troubled areas of Sub-Saharan Africa

Question 59

Why did South Asians migrate to Fiji?

A)They came to colonize Fiji.
B)They had committed crimes in India, and came as prisoners.
C)They came as a result of a government policy in India to relieve overcrowding.
D)They were fleeing civil war in India.
E)to fill labor shortages in the sugarcane fields

Question 60

What strategy has been valuable to both Maoris and Aborigines in their efforts to gain greater control over their ancestral land and resources?

A)consumer boycotts
B)labor strikes
C)acts of terrorism
D)bribery
E)the political process

Question 61

The two nations with the highest GNI per capita in the region are

A)Australia and New Zealand
B)Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands
C)Fiji and the Cook Islands
D)Nauru and Tuvalu
E)Kiribati and the Marshall Islands

Question 62

What is New Zealand's current economic strategy?

A)It is a highly-regulated economy.
B)Most industries are owned by the government.
C)It is one of the most market-oriented countries in the world.
D)It seeks to strike a balance between market-orientation and appropriate regulation.
E)It is a socialist state.

Question 63

Roughly half of New Zealand's exports go to

A)China, Australia and the European Union
B)Indonesia, the European Union and the United States
C)China, Japan and the United States
D)China, Japan and Indonesia
E)Australia, Indonesia and Japan

Question 64

What fish is heavily harvested in the South Pacific Ocean?

A)mackerel
B)tuna
C)squid
D)catfish
E)flounder

Question 65

The post-secondary educational attainment rates for Aborigines in Australia and Maori in New Zealand

A)are higher than average for both Aborigines in Australia and for Maori in New Zealand
B)are lower than average for Aborigines in Australia but higher than average for Maori in New Zealand
C)are lower than average for both Aborigines in Australia and for Maori in New Zealand
D)are roughly the same as they are for the white population in both nations
E)are higher than average for Aborigines in Australia but lower than average for Maori in New Zealand

Question 66

Australia and Oceania face numerous environmental risks. Write an essay in which you describe and assess the severity of these problems.

Question 67

Much of Australia's economic wealth has been built upon

A)hydroelectric power
B)fishing
C)wind power
D)tourism
E)extraction of raw materials for export abroad to foreign industries

Question 68

The next frontier in resource extraction in the region may be

A)oil-tar sands
B)deep-sea mining
C)the generation of electricity from tidal currents
D)wind turbines erected on platforms erected in deep oceanic waters
E)hydraulic fracking

Question 69

The recent surge in growth in the mining sector is largely due to increased trade with which nation?

A)United States
B)United Kingdom
C)Japan
D)New Zealand
E)China

Question 70

Which nation maintains a strong geopolitical influence over Micronesia?

A)United Kingdom
B)Australia
C)France
D)New Zealand
E)United States

Question 71

What is the geographic limit of the extension given to nations of the Pacific by their Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ)?

A)25 miles
B)50 miles
C)200 miles
D)15 miles
E)100 miles

Question 72

Many regions of Micronesia and Polynesia are highly dependent upon what form of income?

A)tourism
B)farming
C)light manufacturing
D)fishing
E)mining

Question 73

Australia's number one trade partner is

A)New Zealand
B)India
C)United States
D)Taiwan
E)China

Question 74

Which of the following is NOT mined in Australia?

A)copper
B)diamonds
C)bauxite
D)lead
E)gold

Question 75

Which two nations in the region have become a fledgling wine exporters?

A)Kiribati and the Marshall Islands
B)Fiji and the Cook Islands
C)Nauru and Tuvalu
D)Australia and New Zealand
E)Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands

Question 76

Many of the luxury hotels along the Gold Coast of Australia are owned by (and cater to)

A)British
B)Chinese
C)Americans
D)Japanese
E)Russians

Question 77

What is the Asia Pivot?

A)the pivot of the global economy away from the United States and onto the focus of the Pacific Rim
B)the trilateral military alliance between the United States, Japan and China
C)the shift of American military away from the Middle East and toward the Asia-Pacific world, namely with the establishment of small "lily-pad" bases scattered across the Pacific
D)the peace talks sponsored by the United States to end the geopolitical tensions between China and Taiwan
E)the establishment of a new trade agreement with the nations of the Far East, such as China and Japan

Question 78

What event triggered a major slowdown in New Zealand's agricultural exports?

A)the loss of farm labor to New Zealand's growing industrial sector
B)changing global markets which made Chinese agricultural exports cheaper
C)the British decision to join the European Union in 1973, which put in place strict agricultural protection policies
D)the arrival of mad cow disease in New Zealand
E)major climate change which limited the agricultural exports of New Zealand

Question 79

What nation of Melanesia is home to several major copper and gold mines?

A)Tuvalu
B)Fiji
C)Papua New Guinea
D)Guam
E)Solomon Islands

Question 80

What is the least developed and poorest part of Oceania?

A)Polynesia
B)Micronesia
C)Melanesia
D)New Zealand
E)Tasmania