Problems of cartographic study of vegetation structure in Siberia

Abstract

The works by V. B. Sochava have laid the foundation of the system geographical-historical approach to vegetation study, determined the features of vegetation cartography in Siberia. The profound intensification of cartographic works in Siberia began in seventies. At that period, ahead of the others, V. B. Sochava raised the problem of ecologyzation of geographic investigations and among them vegetation cartography. Thus he stimulated the development of ecological-geobotanical (phytoecological) mapping. In the eighties the estimation-prognosis mapping started to develope that enhanced the demands to the universal geobotanical map. At the present time in Siberia the cartographical-geobotanical investigations are conducting in the frame of numerous regional and local ecological problems and first of all those related to the concept of stable development of the Baikal region adopted at the UNO conference in 1992. The vegetation map published in Baikal Atlas is an example of such new survey-inquiry mapping, the same are the vegetation map and the estimation map of vegetation disturbances of the Irkutsk District. In the above map, in contrast to previous ones, more attention have been paid to the destructive dynamic processes, therefore the typification of the secondary communities has been carried out not through the restoration series but through the stages of anthropogenic transformation series. Natural and derivative units (numbers) are united into unified dynamic series (epitaxons). Two dynamic processes – destruction and demutation – can be traced on the vegetation map of Irkutsk District. At the base of the universal geobotanical map the block of phytoecological maps has been created. At present days the interest to the middle-scale and the large-scale mapping in Siberia is increasing sharply. Perspectives of its development are connected with forming the regional and local GIS and with developing the operative computer-mapping.