The Subject and Structure of Geosystems Theory

A logical model of the system of disciplines generally known as physical geography distinguishes three subjects of study, each associated with a particular level of organization of the basic study object, namely the earth's physical landscape envelope or landscape shell and its subsystems (individual landscapes or geocomplexes): (1) study of the componental level of organization would be the subject of the particular disciplines in physical geography (geomorphology, climatology, etc.); (2) study of the integrated level of organization would be the subject of landscape science, which is viewed as a synthesis of the particular disciplines; (3) study of the earth's natural environment at the level of the entire landscape envelope would be the subject of general physical geography or general earth science. The subject matter of the particular disciplines and of the synthesized landscape science is further broken down into research areas: regional research (concerned with geographical spaces); typological research (quasi-geographical spaces) and general research (nongeographical).     

Atlas of the United States

In an attempt to distinguish between regional physical geography and the Soviet school of landscape science, the author defines the study objects of the two disciplines and provides a useful review of the present state of landscape science in the Soviet Union. Physical geography is said to be concerned with study of the entire geographical shell of the earth, ranging from the troposphere to the bottom of the layer of sedimentary rocks in the earth's crust. Landscape science focuses on the so-called landscape sphere, which is defined as the portion of the geographical shell that lies at or near the surface of the earth and is imbued with present-day life. Although some Soviet geographers treat the term “landscape” as a broad conceptual term (similar to climate), most investigators tend to give the term a classificatory or typological connotation, regarding landscape as the basic unit in a classification of natural geocomplexes. One landscape school focuses on the morphological structure of landscape, the other on model-building of the landscape mechanism.     

The Subject of Geography and the Science of the Man-Nature Relationship

A philosopher views the geographical environment as a natural-social concept, in which individual elements function simultaneously in a system of natural and social relationships. The geographical environment should be the province of a discipline called general geography, which would exist in addition to specialized physical and social geography. However, since general geography is limited spatially to the earth's landscape sphere, it cannot deal with the broader aspects of the man-nature relationship now that man's influence extends increasingly beyond the earth into outer space. A new discipline called “noology” is proposed to deal with the interplay between human society and all of nature.     

Fifty Years of Development of Soviet Geographic Thought

A review of trends in Soviet geography covers the increasing specialization of physical-geographic disciplines and attempts to integrate physical geography through landscape-study techniques and the theory of a physical-geographic envelope of the earth. Economic geography has focused on regionalization problems and the formation of territorial-production complexes. The controversy over the content of geography is reviewed, and cartography and regional geography are viewed as frameworks for the generalization of geographic information. The new constructive school of Soviet geography is described.     

THINGS THAT ARE ALMOST BUT NOT QUITE WELL KNOWN IN PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY

The author, a physical geographer, sees no need to despair about the present state of the discipline and the future of geography. He places geography in context among the sciences and finds a need for a synthesizing discipline that pulls together the findings of the particular disciplines. Such a function might be performed by landscape science and regional geography. In general, geographers are found to go too far afield in their research and there is a need to define the focus of the disciplines to eliminate the present centrifugal tendencies. Such a unifying focus might be found in geographical prediction. Geographers should be aware of the limits and capabilities of their discipline; geography is most effective in fostering solutions in conjunction with other disciplines. Fieldwork per se is criticized; some geographers make a fetish of fieldwork, spending their life in the field without ever writing up the results as a contribution to science. The language of geographical exposition must be cleansed of pseudoscientific jargon; too much geographical writing is incomprehensible. The use of mathematics in geography should be placed in historical perspective; it is not the panacea for all that ails geography.     

人文地理过程内涵辨析与模拟探讨

人文地理过程是陆地表层系统地理过程最重要的组成部分之一。本文从陆地表层系统科学的角度出发,探讨了人文地理过程的基本内涵及主要组成部分,指出人口迁移过程和经济集聚-扩散过程是人文地理过程最重要的要素过程,城市化和土地利用变化是人文地理过程最直接的空间表达形式;在此基础上进一步探讨了人文地理过程模拟的核心内容,包括要素模拟和综合过程模拟;提出了人文过程模拟的主要数据源获得途径与模拟方法,指出了人文地理过程模拟需要解决的几个关键问题。     

The Landscape Sphere and the Geographical Environment

An advocate of a unified geography adopts a biosocial, or natural-social, approach to the definition of several concepts in geography, distinguishing the landscape sphere and the geographical environment. The landscape sphere of the earth consists of the sphere of the natural landscape (comprising both untouched and man-altered nature) and the sphere of human activity, or sociosphere, which includes the sphere of the cultural landscape (agrosphere plus technosphere) and mankind itself. The geographical environment includes the natural environment (man-altered nature plus parts of untouched nature), the material results of the labor of past generations and geographical manifestations of the social environment.     

Landscape Methods Abroad (with reference to land resource studies of the United States and Australia)

Although landscape research has not been set apart formally as a distinctive branch of geography in the West, the methods used in certain research programs in the United States and in Australia come close to the integrated areal approach to the study of the physical environment characteristic of Soviet landscape science. In the United States, landscape-like methods are used by the Soil Survey staff of the Department of Agriculture in its soil surveys of counties. In Australia, the landscape approach is used by the Division of Land Research of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization in its reports on Australia's land systems.     

Scientific Fundamentals of Higher Geography Education in Universities and Teachers Colleges of the USSR

The geography curriculum of universities is analyzed in terms of the total number of class-hours allocated to various groups of subjects: systematic geography, regional geography, specialization courses, courses in physics, chemistry and mathematics, and education courses. It is suggested that systematic courses could be strengthened by introduction of more courses on theoretical subjects, such as the fundamentals of landscape science and the theory of economic geography. Regional courses suffer from excessive factual material and not enough discussion of general patterns and concepts. Courses that shape the specialization of geographers should be more flexible in order to reflect continuing changes in emphasis in geographic research (for example, by introduction of a course in remote-sensing techniques). A background in the exact sciences is thought to be essential for the modern geographer.     

Spatial Analysis in Physical Geography and the Challenge of Deterministic Uncertainty

The application of complex and nonlinear dynamical systems (NDS) theory in physical geography and geosciences has proceeded through several stages, and has recently entered a phase where field-testable hypotheses and historical or mechanistic explanations are being generated. However, there are some fundamental challenges. It seems clear that chaos and dynamical self-organization are present, and may be common in earth surface systems, and that these phenomena have spatial manifestations in the landscape. However, NDS theory and methods have been formulated primarily in the temporal domain and are typically ill-suited to real-world spatial data. Spatial analytical methods are not generally capable of distinguishing deterministic complexity and uncertainty from noise. Thus, the detection of the signals of complex deterministic dynamics in real landscapes and spatial data is a major challenge. Entropy-based methods of spatial analysis can be directly linked to nonlinear dynamics, and are at present the best available method to approach this problem. However, there is evidence in the spatial analysis literature suggesting that development of techniques to detect deterministic uncertainty is possible. Pending such a break-through, three general approaches are described, based on spatial analysis of chronosequences, the characteriziation of changes in spatial structure over time, and the spatial-domain testing of specific hypotheses relevant to deterministic uncertainty. Current trends generally suggest a shift in mathematical modeling and spatial analysis in physical geography away from traditional determinism toward approaches that incorporate locational, historical, and scale contingency.     

On the So-Called Anthropogenic Landscapes

A Leningrad physical geographer, who is an advocate of the natural landscape school in Soviet geography, offers a critique of the school of anthropogenic landscape science favored by F. N. Mil'kov of Voronezh University and others. Landscapes, in the critic's view, are natural formations produced by physical cause-and-effect relationships among their natural components, and no basis is found for the development of a theory of anthropogenic landscapes that reflect the impact of human activity and minimize the role of natural elements. The author questions whether man is in fact capable of creating landscape in the literal sense and whether this can be accomplished by merely modifying a single natural landscape component. Further investigation is urged to establish the real role of engineering structures and agricultural activities in the landscape and their place within the system of natural linkages within the landscape. This line of investigation should then lead to study of the structure of landscapes that have been modified by man and to an understanding of a sequence of landscape succession, including man-induced and reconstructed variants.     

On the Study of the History of Geographical Ideas

The author rebuts the criticism by Yu. G. Saushkin that the book Razvitiye geograficheskikh idey [The Evolution of Geographical Ideas] is in effect a history of physical geography rather than a history of geography as a whole. Isachenko contends that concepts of natural science have been at the root of geography throughout its history and it is therefore natural for a history of geographical ideas to deal predominantly with the ideas of physical geography. Far from having ignored human geography, Isachenko contends, his book traces the anthropocentric school through its various stages of development. Only the survey of Soviet geography was restricted to physical geography, the author says, because Soviet geography consists of two virtually independent disciplines and the author happens to be a physical geographer viewing his discipline as the foundation of all geography.     

Straddling the Boundaries Between Sciences

The author reverts to the theme that, in addition to the particular disciplines in physical geography and in economic geography, there is a genuine need for a general geographic approach to study of the geographical environment and of the man-nature relationship. As a result of the growing social impact on the environment, the operation of natural laws and social laws becomes so closely intertwined that no single discipline operating with one particular set of laws is capable of understanding the complex processes and phenomena in the interplay between nature and society. The growing specialized differentiation of geography as a science does not eliminate it as a distinct field of human knowledge with a common object of study. However there is a danger that the process of differentiation may be going too far, with an increasing number of scholars from adjacent disciplines coming into geography. The trend is said to be evident in the advanced training of geographers in universities, where geography facilities are turning into collections of departments turning out, say, meteorologists with little general geographic background. And yet there is a growing need for broadly trained geographers, particularly in the entire field of long-range planning and pre-planning research, in which the author is engaged.     

On the Unity of Geography

A Leningrad University physical geographer criticizes attempts to affirm the unity of geography through the creation of new disciplines like “general geography,” which would focus on study of the man-nature relationship. He contends that such a general geography, which would seek to identify general geographic laws, is advocated primarily by economic geographers who would emphasize the role of man at the expense of physical geography. Isachenko takes issue with the view that what makes any research “geographical” is its relationship to man. He contends that the criterion of whether any investigation is “geographical” is its relationship to the geosystem, defined as any natural complex, ranging from the global to the local scale. In his opinion, the unity of geography should be furthered not through the establishment of new supradisciplines, such as general geography, but through closer ties, both in methodology and in organizational terms, between the two main groups of geographical disciplines—physical geography and economic geography.     

旅游地理视角下记忆研究的进展与启示

记忆是当前西方人文社会科学的重要研究领域,同时也是一个跨学科的概念。记忆与时间和空间密不可分,随着20世纪90年代以来"旅游潮"和"记忆转向"的兴起,记忆研究日益成为中西方旅游地理研究者的关注领域。本文通过对人文地理学中旅游相关研究中的记忆议题和研究方法的梳理,从记忆、物质景观与地方意义的感知,记忆、仪式与身份认同,以及旅游者的情感体验与地方建构三个方面进行分析,以期展现充满文化、社会、政治乃至经济内涵的记忆地理问题发展脉络及独特意义,为国内旅游地理学开拓新的研究视野。     

Theoretical Discussions and Some Research Tasks and Applied Problems in Economic Geography

Two economic geographers, commenting on Anuchin's latest book on the theory of geography, urge a halt to the fruitless debate over a “unified geography” and call for a more practical orientation of geographic research. Dwelling on a wide range of issues, from geography education to the content of geography journals, the authors hold that the man-nature relationship is no longer adequate as a conceptual framework for geography and that economic geography, in particular, must take into account political and social processes that fall within the province of political science and economics. A gap is found to have developed between political science, on the one hand, and economic geography, on the other, and the authors hold that such a gap might be filled by a discipline concerned with the spatial organization of economic processes. A legitimate role is seen here for a regional economics, or choreconomics. In the authors' view, geography would gain not only from a more pronounced economics-oriented economic geography, but also from a more practically oriented physical geography.     

The Concept of Landscape and Landscapes of Different Orders

The paper is an expanded version of a Lomonosov lecture given April 12, 1956, in the Earth Science Museum of Moscow University. Yefremov criticizes the confusion derived from the dual meaning of “landscape” as used by Soviet geographers: (1) landscape as an areal unit of varying taxonomic rank constituting a complex of all components that interact within the earth's surficial sphere (or landscape sphere), and (2) landscape as an indivisible basic areal unit, or “molecule,” or “cell” of physical geography. Yefremov defends the first and assails the second point of view.     

基于地理学视角的中国山水画分析

本文从美术地理学的角度出发阐述了中国山水画的地域差别,指出地理环境对山水画的影响主要表现在几方面:即对山水画作品面貌的影响,对山水画家创作灵感的影响,对作品风格和地域特色的影响,对山水画派和地域人才形成的影响。因而,地理环境是艺术家创作的对象和源泉,也是决定美术风格的关键因素,对山水画派和地域人才的形成具有重要影响。