География

The composition of macro-regions in the «Strategy of Spatial Development of the Russian Federation for the Period up to 2025» is considered. The principles of allocation of the macro-region are analyzed from the position of compliance with the approaches of economic zoning. Within the vast territory of the Ural-Volga region, typical and transitional regions are distinguished, morphological features of the settlement system are analyzed, primarily in the river valleys. The conclusion is made about the internal heterogeneity of a number of proposed macro-regions.

The classification of spring-summer droughts into the categories of «weak», «moderate», «strong», «ecological catastrophe» derived from regional meteorological characteristics and the sensitivity scale of Scots pine to drought is discussed. It is proposed to evaluate the drought as an autonomous natural phenomenon, within a certain territory and its (dry) vegetative season.

The article is devoted to some aspects of assessing the quality of the documents of territorial planning of regions and municipal areas of the steppe zone of European Russia. The main aim is a score-rating evaluation of quantitative and qualitative indicators, cognitive terminology analysis reflecting differences in regional schemes of territorial planning (STP). The results of the research show that the quality of the STP at the level of the regions of the Russian Federation is much higher than the quality of the STP of municipalities.

Nowadays there are problems in improving the agricultural production of the Krasnodar region. For the development of agriculture in the resort area of this region, it is necessary to establish certain efficient
and competitive areas of agro-industrial production.

Currently the laser scanning method is increasingly used to record the effects of man-made accidents and natural disasters. At the same time, world practice and experience have shown that laser scan data can be used not only to inventory and refine the state of landslide bodies, but also to monitor and predict their development.

Saratov is one of the cities of the Volga region where in a relatively small area many industrial enterprises are concentrated emitting into the atmosphere harmful substances which, entering the atmosphere are deposited on the surface, washed out by precipitation and are carried to considerable distances from the place of emission. All of these processes occur with the help of the wind and depend on air temperature, solar radiation, rainfall and other meteorological factors.

The article features the results of comprehensive studies of Maklasheevka II fortified settlement carried out at the intersection of natural and humanitarian sciences, and one of the area of this work was integrative soil-archaeological studies. This approach includes a cross-spectrum archaeological and pedological analysis of the ancient soils.

Algoremediation which is a method of natural and waste water treatment due to the metabolic potential of chlorococcal microalgae is based on the principle of system stability. The method of pollution degree estimation of anthropogenic loaded water object based on the application of fractal calculation is shown. Factor analysis has been used to determine the parameters of the environmental system of Nizhny Tagil city pond which are the basis for a new approach to evaluating the efficiency of environmental protection measures through geoecological risk management.

A special category of long-term forecasts is considered, the object of forecasting is not the anomalies of the hydrometeorological regime (temperature, precipitation), but the dates of its sharp change. Methodological issues are raised to develop adequate methods for estimating such forecasts. The possibility of applying the method of accuracy of short-term forecasts to the justification of long-term forecasts is substantiated.

The Earth’s climate system (ECS) is considered as a linear system whose input is a change in the solar constant, and the output is an anomaly of the globally averaged surface temperature. As a result of the restoration, the impulse response of the system was obtained at time intervals up to 100 months. It has been shown that the response time of ECS can be characterized by a time constant of 1.305 ± 0.026 months. The sensitivity of ECS to radiative forcing is 0.320±0.074 K W^-1m², and the positive feedback coefficient is 1.07±0.25.