TOWARD A UNIFICATION OF CONCEPTS AND TERMS USED IN INTEGRAL LANDSCAPE INVESTIGATIONS

A discussion of the concepts and terms of landscape research developed and applied for more than a decade at the field stations of the Institute of Geography of Siberia and the Far East (Irkutsk). The key concepts are geosystems, which represent the sphere of interaction between animate and inanimate nature; ecosystems, which focus on the biotic aspect of geosystems. Geosystems are said to fall within the sphere of interest of the landscape geographer, while ecosystems are viewed as the study objects of ecology, a biological discipline. Although the two approaches are said to be distinctive, the interests of geographers and ecologists overlap, and a common terminology for both disciplines is proposed.