Match List - I with List - II and choose the correct answer by using the code given below the lists.
List - I (Coal Field)
A. Appalachian
B. Lancashire
C. Ruhr
D. Kuzbass
List - II (Country)
1. Englan

Question

Match List - I with List - II and choose the correct answer by using the code given below the lists.
List - I (Coal Field)
A. Appalachian
B. Lancashire
C. Ruhr
D. Kuzbass
List - II (Country)
1. England
2. Germany
3. Russia
4. United States of America

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — A, A-4, B-1, C-2, D-3. The Appalachian coalfield (A) is the great coal basin of the eastern United States (4), running down the Appalachian belt through Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Kentucky; it is one of the three largest coal-producing regions of the USA alongside the Powder River Basin and the Illinois Basin. Lancashire (B) is a coalfield of North West England (1), spread over roughly 550 square miles of Lancashire, Greater Manchester, Merseyside and part of Cheshire, and it was one of the cradles of the Industrial Revolution. The Ruhr (C) lies in Germany (2), in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, taking its name from the river Ruhr; with almost 300 collieries working by 1850 its coal fed the coke ovens and blast furnaces that made this Europe's largest industrial region by 1870. The Kuzbass or Kuznetsk Basin (D) is in Russia (3), in Kemerovo Oblast in south-western Siberia — about 26,000 square kilometres of coal measures that today yield roughly 60 per cent of Russia's coal.

Why the other options are wrong — (b) It gets the Ruhr and the Kuzbass right but swaps the first two, sending the Appalachian coalfield to England and Lancashire to the United States. The Appalachians are the mountain system of eastern North America, and Lancashire is an English county — the two cannot cross.  (c) Every pair here is wrong. It carries the same Appalachian-Lancashire swap as option (b) and adds a second one, putting the Ruhr in Russia and the Kuzbass in Germany. The Ruhr is named after a German river and the Kuznetsk Basin after the Siberian town of Kuznetsk, so the two are not interchangeable.  (d) The most tempting wrong answer, because it places the Appalachian coalfield in the USA and Lancashire in England correctly and only fails on the last two — assigning the Ruhr to Russia and the Kuzbass to Germany. The Ruhr is in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany; the Kuznetsk Basin is in Kemerovo Oblast, Russia.

Concept: The world's classic coalfields are named after the river valley, basin or county in which the coal measures outcrop, and each anchored a heavy-industrial region built on the coal-plus-iron combination: coal to coke, coke to pig iron, pig iron to steel. The Appalachian belt underpinned the American manufacturing belt around Pittsburgh; Lancashire and the adjoining Yorkshire and Midlands fields powered Britain's Industrial Revolution; the Ruhr made Germany an industrial power and later became the core of the European Coal and Steel Community; and the Kuznetsk Basin was developed in the 1930s as the eastern half of Stalin's Ural-Kuznetsk industrial combine.

State PCS 2025 Q72 — Geography PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q72 — Geography PYQ with Answer