Home – Home – Jornals – Geography and natural resources 2018 number 1

A city is considered as a complex object for study that combines the natural basis and the man-made environment. The landscape-functional differentiation became a fundamental stage of relevant investigations. The modern landscape and functional structures of the territory of Birobidzhan have been studied on the basis of research results and material of previous work. The basic characteristics of the natural and anthropogenic components of Birobidzhan are provided for the period starting from its foundation. Extensive areas of natural landscapes areas little affected by anthropogenic activities have been identified as well as a relatively large number of open spaces and green spaces which refer to potential reserve areas in ecological planning, are identified in the city limits. Furthermore, it was found that the planning structure of Birobidzhan has been an environmentally unreasonable project, which is evidenced by the chaotic location of industrial, residential and recreational areas, and the absence of sanitary protection zones within the urban development. The soil-vegetable cover and planning structure has been used as the main criteria for the selection of landscape-functional complexes. As a result, four landscape-functional complexes were identified in the city: man-made, anthropogenic-man-made, anthropogenic-natural, natural and anthropogenic, with different proportions in the urban system of Birobidzhan. Systematization within these complexes is used as a basis for the legend to the 1:25 000 map “Landscape functional complexes in Birobidzhan”, scale 1:25 000. The results obtained can serve as a basis for a preliminary assessment of the ecological situation and for the development of recommendations for the optimization of the quality of the urban environment. In the structure of the landscape-functional complexes, 35.5 % correspond to the heavily modified technogenic and anthropogenic technogenic landscapes. Some improvements can be achieved by increasing the proportion of anthropogenic-natural complexes and through conservation of those natural and man-made landscape-functional complexes with different levels of disturbance.