Contribution of V. B. Sochava to the development of vegetation cartography

Abstract

Academician Victor B. Sochava is a prominent scientist of the present time – a botanist, geographer, ecologist. He is the author of significant scientific works on the theory, methodology and applied aspects of geobotany, the author and editor of numerous vegetation maps of Russia as well as maps of continents and the world as a whole. This communication concerns the role and significance of his works for the recent development of vegetation cartography. Sochava's name is connected with the new phytoecological stage of the thematic cartography. It is in his works that the ideas of phytoecological mapping, its theoretical and methodological foundations have been laid. Just in the 60-s he, time and again, raised the problem of increasing the information capacity of geobotanical maps. The further development in this direction has resulted in elaborating the principles of correlation cartography. The ecological- phytocoenotical map of Asian Russia, s. 1 : 7 500 000, created and edited under his leadership in 1977, became an excellent example of this approach. The system paradigm, developed in the Sochava's works, has given a new impulse to the modern phytoecological mapping and has determined its high level that has reflected in the creation of the phytoecosystem maps synthesizing the properties of vegetation and environments on the base of their structure-forming relations. Then in the paper the main theoretical concepts by V. B. Sochava are considered, such as the two-row classification of vegetation , its structural-dynamic analysis, the concept of epitaxon, the regional concept proper. The application of these and other theoretical concepts and their modern development are illustrated by the vegetation maps of some extensive regions: the European part of the USSR, West Siberia, the southern East Siberia, the drainage-basin of the Amur R., as well as by the new vegetation map of the USSR, s. 1 : 4 000 000, published in 1990. Considerable attention in the communication has been paid to the applied aspects of V. B. Sochava's activity: the creation of specialized thematic maps, such as the prognosis ones, the estimation, resource, nature conservation, medical-geographic, etc. V. B. Sochava kept diverse connections with foreign scientists, he was an active member of various international societies, commissions and associations, participated in international conferences, symposia, published works in different languages, promoting the authority of the national science. At the same time he considered the study of foreign scientific experience to be a necessary condition for successful development of the scientific research in our country.