Unit 2 practice test: Population and Migration Patterns and Processes

Where few people live far apart, each clinic serves few patients and costs more per person, so services close or become mobile. The passage gives the evidence: closures and two-hour drives.

• Hospitals are overcrowded because so many people live close together: that describes the Capital Region in the notice, not the Northern Hills.
• Correct: Clinics have few patients, so some close and travel is long: Right: the notice says clinics with few patients close and families drive two hours.
• Health care is easier to reach because the roads have little traffic: the notice says people now drive two hours to a hospital.
• The province is building a third hospital to meet demand: the Capital Region is building the third hospital.

A compare speaks of both sides. Low density spreads patients thin in the Northern Hills; high density crowds hospitals in the Capital Region.

• Both provinces have too few patients to keep their clinics open: the Capital Region’s emergency rooms are full.
• The Capital Region has fewer people per square kilometer than the Northern Hills, so its hospitals are quiet: the notice says over 1,000 in the capital and about 6 in the Northern Hills.
• Correct: Services are far away in the Northern Hills but overloaded in the Capital Region: Right: this speaks of both provinces and links each problem to density.
• Density has no effect on health care in either province: the notice links clinic closures and full hospitals to how many people live nearby.

The data describe provinces inside one country, so the scale of analysis is local (subnational).

• National: the whole of Country A as one unit: the notice gives values for provinces, not one value for the country.
• Global: countries around the world: only one country, Country A, appears.
• Regional: a world region made up of several countries: there is only one country in the notice, and it compares its provinces.
• Correct: Local (subnational): two provinces of one country: Right: the notice compares provinces inside Country A.

Place A (eastern China) and Place D (the Ganges valley) sit in the East Asia and South Asia clusters, where more than four in ten of the world’s people live (UN WPP 2024).

• Correct: A and D: Right: eastern China and the Ganges valley of South Asia are the two biggest clusters on Earth.
• B and C: the Sahara and northern Canada are two of the emptiest places on Earth.
• A and C: eastern China is crowded, but northern Canada has very few people.
• B and D: the Ganges valley is crowded, but very few people live in the Sahara.

Place B is in the Sahara. With so little rain, there is not enough water to grow food, so few people live there.

• The land is too high and steep for farms, roads or most buildings: that fits high mountains such as the Himalaya, not the Sahara at Place B.
• Correct: Very little rain falls, so there is little water for crops: Right: Place B is in the Sahara, one of the driest places on Earth.
• Long, cold winters keep the ground frozen: that fits Place C in northern Canada, not the hot desert at Place B.
• Thick rainforest covers most of the land: that fits the Amazon basin, not a desert.

Different physical factors can produce the same pattern: few people. Cold limits settlement in northern Canada, at Place C, and lack of water limits it in the Sahara, at Place B.

• Dryness limits where people live at both places: northern Canada is not mainly limited by dryness; its long, cold winters are the problem.
• High mountains limit where people live at both places: neither place is mainly a high mountain range.
• Correct: Cold limits where people live at C, while dryness limits it at B: Right: northern Canada is cold for most of the year, and the Sahara is very dry.
• Heat limits where people live at Place C, while cold limits it at Place B: this swaps the two climates: C is cold and B is hot and dry.

The pattern you see depends on the scale of analysis. A world map shows eastern China as one cluster; a local map shows people packed onto river plains and the coast, with fewer in the hills.

• People spread evenly over the whole area, with no crowded or empty parts: local maps show more detail, and they reveal uneven patterns that the world map hides.
• Fewer people, because local maps leave out large parts of the area: a local map covers less area but shows it in more detail; the people are still there.
• Exactly the same picture as the world map, with no new detail: changing the scale of analysis changes what you can see; a local map adds detail.
• Correct: Crowded river plains and coast, with emptier hills between them: Right: a closer look shows the cluster has its own pattern: crowded lowlands, thinner hills.