SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 24 September 2024, Shift 1 · General Awareness · Question 5 of 98

Text as printed on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; answer per SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 10 September 2026.

Where this paper and its answers come from

SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. The questions and options here are reproduced as printed on a candidate's own response sheet for this shift — the Commission's text, unchanged. Each answer is SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet; SSC allowed challenges to it and never publishes a final key. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

Which of the following statements is correct?

(a)Rivers and sea water are considered as fresh water.
(b)Pond water and sea water are considered as fresh water.
(c)Rivers, creeks, lakes, ponds, and streams are all freshwater habitats.
(d)Sea water is freshwater habitat.

Answer

Why

Correct — C. Rivers, creeks, lakes, ponds and streams all hold fresh water, so grouping them as freshwater habitats is the statement that survives.

The test is salinity. Fresh water carries a very small quantity of dissolved salt, well under one gram per litre, while sea water averages about 35 grams per litre.

Each remaining statement puts sea water inside the freshwater group, and sea water is saline by definition. Option (c).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Rivers and sea water are considered as fresh water. — Rivers do qualify, but sea water is not fresh water. One false member makes the whole compound statement false.
(b)
Pond water and sea water are considered as fresh water. — Pond water is fresh, yet sea water is saline, so the pair fails for the same reason. The sea can never sit on the freshwater side.
(d)
Sea water is freshwater habitat. — Sea water is a marine habitat, the opposite of a freshwater one. Salinity is the standard dividing line between the two.

Concept

Aquatic habitats split first by salt. Freshwater habitats — rivers, streams, lakes, ponds, springs — carry so little dissolved salt that the organisms in them work to keep salt in. Marine habitats carry so much that organisms work to keep water in.

Between them sit brackish waters such as estuaries and lagoons, where a river meets the sea and salinity swings with the tide.

Almost all the planet's water is in the oceans. Fresh water is a small fraction of the total, and most of that fraction is locked in glaciers and ice caps rather than flowing in rivers.

Creek is the loose word here. Inland, a creek is a small stream and fresh. On the Indian coast a creek is often a tidal inlet of the sea, as the Mahim and Thane creeks in Mumbai are. The question uses the textbook inland sense and the key follows it.

Key facts

Fresh water contains a very low concentration of dissolved salts, generally under one gram per litre.
Sea water has an average salinity of about 35 grams of dissolved salt per litre.
Rivers, streams, lakes and ponds are the standard textbook examples of freshwater habitats.
Estuaries and lagoons are brackish, sitting between fresh water and sea water.

Study next

Terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and the sub-types of eachEstuaries, lagoons and mangroves as brackish transition habitatsHow freshwater and marine organisms handle osmotic stress

Common traps

A compound statement is false if any single member of it is false.
Creek reads as fresh in a textbook list but is often tidal and saline on a real coastline.
Fresh does not mean drinkable. Pond water is fresh and still unsafe.

Ecology enters through classification rather than data. The two basic categories of an ecosystem are asked at 13 Sep 2024, 09:00, GA Q.9, and a man-made ecosystem at 13 Sep 2024, 09:00, GA Q.8, both answered by sorting examples into a named group.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

Topic: Scientific Research — all 152 SSC CGL questions on it, every solved shift.