Get That Grade

1	(a)	coniferous wood
	(b)	non-coniferous wood (deciduous wood would get a mark too)
	(c)	mixed wood
	(d)	park land (This reference shows the very top line of the map. Line 80, and 0 tenths up the square. Nasty trick from the question setter, just to keep you on your toes!)
	(e)	quarry
	Question 1 was very straightforward. It should have been easy to gain the full 5 marks for this question. The rest of the questions are difficult. You were asked to look at small pieces of evidence and use a lot of geographical understanding to interpret that evidence. Detailed notes on the answers have been given below. They were written by a very experienced geographer. Give yourself credit if you managed to get even small parts of the answers right! You may even have come up with some explanations that the person who wrote these notes did not consider! They might be sensible suggestions. Why not e-mail the examiner to ask whether you were thinking along the right lines?

You would be most likely to find pasture for dairy cattle.

This is because the land is on the flat flood plain of the Thames.
The soil is probably fertile, deposited by the river, so it is too good to be left as rough grazing for sheep. In any case, sheep do not thrive on wet soil, as it can cause their feet to rot.
As the land is probably damp for much of the year it is not suitable for heavy machinery.
Floods could destroy growing arable crops.
The damp, fertile soil can produce good, lush grass, ideal for dairy cattle. The land is not too steep for the cows, and they have easy access to drinking water.

This area of woodland runs along a steep slope, between about 60 and 100 metres in height. This is clearly too steep to be worked easily. It is not suitable to be ploughed for arable crops, and it is too steep for dairy cattle to manage on. Therefore, because it is not economic for other uses, it has been left as woodland.

4	(a)	Woodland brings small returns, if any, to the landowner. Most of this land is not steep, but it has not been used. This suggests that the land must be of poor quality, because it is rather wasteful (from an economic point of view) to leave it as woodland.
	(b)	The area lies on chalk rock (see Mapwork 4). This is permeable and so there is little surface water. This might be a reason for the land not being used for agriculture. Also chalk dissolves easily. This might mean that the area has very thin soil - another reason why it is not good farm land.