Home – Home – Jornals – Geography and Natural Resources 2023 number 5S

It is suggested that thematic maps with zoological contents should all be differentiated into zoogeographical and geozoological by the essence of the objects to which the maps are devoted. A review of the creation of such maps is made. On zoogeographical maps, parts of the earth’s surface are the main objects, and animal assembly parameters are features of objects. To create such maps, a thematic base map (drawing base) is first prepared on the basis of an administrative, landscape or plant map. This base map initially does not depend on the parameters of animal populations. Zoological characteristics will be given to each unit of the legend of the base map upon its creation. As a result of certain generalizations of this legend, the prepared zoogeographic maps reflect the similarity and differences in the territorial divisions of the base map according to their zoological features. An analysis is made of the structure and contents of legends of such maps. The most common cases of their incorrect reading were considered. The objects of geozoological maps are animal species or their populations. In this case, the features of a species (a population) are represented by individual areas of the earth’s surface with the characteristics of the species on them. These maps generate ideas of the spatial heterogeneity of the density of a species, its morphology or vital activity. When creating geozoological maps, a preliminary division of the territory into the elementary spatial units under consideration is carried out in many instances. These units should be of equal magnitude for the most objective image of the phenomenon. The smaller are the elementary spatial units, the more fully can the uniqueness of the spatial distribution of the species and the changes in its vital activity be reflected. The inexpediency of using landscape or plant maps as the basis for creating geozoological maps has been demonstrated.