Pleiades Publishing Ltd

The largest cities of the Baikal region—Irkutsk, Ulan-Ude, and Ulaanbaatar (the capital of Mongolia)—are analyzed in terms of the level of their landscaping, the formation of a green framework, and the preservation of natural complexes. The assessment of the quantity and quality of landscaping is carried out using the ideas of territorial nature conservation, as well as taking into account the current standards of urban planning documents, which is the main purpose of this article. An attempt is made to give a detailed indication of the composition and area of the elements of green zones, their classification, institutionality, functional purpose, condition, level of protection, sufficiency of landscaping, and comparative characteristics of cities. The potential of each of the cities and its components are shown in the form of area characteristics and digital estimates of urban green zones and their relationship with normative indicators. A classification of the types of green spaces of the cities has been developed highlighting specially protected natural areas in accordance with special laws, urban forests, and other similar areas determined by resolutions of the city authorities and managed by special municipal entities but not having the special status of green objects, as well as areas important for the greening of the city but neglected by the city government. Alternative components of urban greening in the form of territories occupied by cemeteries are highlighted. A so-called brown part of the ecological framework has been defined in the form of industrial, transport, and warehouse zones; garage cooperatives; and landfills. The situation of the unobvious sufficiency of the total indicators of the urban greening area and the problems of compliance with regulatory documents on urban planning at the level of residential microdistricts of existing and new buildings is discussed. The task of strengthening the links of the nodes of the green framework of the cities is declared, as is the importance of the transition from quantitative to qualitative indicators of landscaping.

Presented are the results obtained from radar profiling of the Peretolchin glacier in the Munku-Sardyk mountain range in the south of Siberia (June 2014 and May 2016) using georadar OKO-2 with the ABDL Triton antenna unit operating at the radiation frequency of 50 and 100 MHz. The ice thickness was determined from the profiles and the ice volumes from the cross-sectional areas and distances between profiles. The ice volume was calculated for the body of the Peretolchin glacier to be 0.007 ± 0.0019 km3. An analytical method was also used to determine the ice volume according to the type and area of glacier. It is established that the correlation between the glacier volume and area is expressed by a power function V = kS p . The mean ice volume, calculated with due regard for different coefficients, was 0.0061 km3. The GlabTop model that assumes the cross-sectional form of the glacier was used to infer the ice volume: the mean volume for two cross-sections (parabolic and elliptic) was 0.0073 km3. It is found that over 110 years since the start of the investigation into the morphology of the Peretolchin glacier, it has increased twice in its length and in area, its volume has decreased by a factor of 3.7, and the lower boundary of the open part of the glacier has risen 184 meters during that period.

We examine the issue concerning the determination of the line of demarcation between geomorphology and the related Earth sciences which is associated with elementarization of continual topographic surface of the planet’s relief. We present our view of the progression along this direction that relies on the theory of the system-morphological foundation of Earth sciences. We established the existence of the synenergy effect in the use of the system-morphological approach in all particular geographical sciences: in microclimatology, it provides a means of referencing microclimates and “local climates” to topographic features; in soil science, it revitalizes the notion of an elementary soil area thus simplifying the process of soil mapping. In geobotany and biogeocenology, this approach helps to make results from studying phytocenose productivity and from dendroindication investigations more representative. We determined a direct practical importance of landscape geophysics and assessments of the significance of geotopes on land surface as well as on the bottom of the World Ocean and beneath mainland glaciers. It is suggested that the system-morphological approach be used in the interests of a further development not only of traditional analytical geomorphology but also its new, synthetic direction that relates geomorphology with social sciences. It is established that in such a case the symmetry tools can be sued to define the relief as the set of locations with anthropogenic objects, processes and phenomena.

With a view to conducting a comprehensive assessment of pollution of the water bodies within the Lake Baikal drainage basin using dimensionless indicators of the water chemical composition, the problems of identifying and testing the indicators were dealt with, which are necessary for determining the sources and levels of pollution and assessing the contributions of the tributaries to lake pollution and the self-cleaning ability of the waters. The methodology of geoecological monitoring as suggested by these authors is based on identifying correlations between polluters and environmental sites by examining technogenic material of from the sites as mixtures, and material from the sources as their components. Identification of the spatio-temporal structure of pollution involves analyzing the landscape organization of the lake drainage basin and the distribution patterns of pollutants. Substantiation of the observation and monitoring network, extrapolation of monitoring results and display of real-time data used landscape mapping methods. An analysis was made of the landscape and geochemical differentiation of the Lake Baikal drainage basin, and the unified indicators of water composition relating water pollution to natural conditions were ranked. The study revealed areas of geosystems with different rates of organic matter decomposition, i. e. the water areas of the lake with a different self-cleaning ability of the waters, and the areas of the drainage basin, the soils of which are responsible for the formation of waters of different types. The resulting contours were generalized in accordance with the scale of the map for the spatial differentiation of biogeochemical parameters of the landscape organization of the drainage basin. The highest decomposition rate of organic matter is characteristic for taiga dark-coniferous geosystems of optimal development, submontane and intermontane depressions and valleys of Khamar-Daban Range, and the lowest rate is typical for goletz and subgoletz geosystems as well as for taiga forests along the western coast of Lake Baikal.

The structure of the stream network in the Lena delta has been studied, and its quantitative characteristics have been obtained for the first time. Taking into consideration the discharge of the branches as well as their width, we determined the conventional delta stream orders decreasing in a regular fashion toward the margin of the delta because of channel bifurcation. They have been used as the basis for determining the structural parameters of delta streams and studying the transformation characteristics of the flows of some materials and heat in the Lena delta.