GEOGRAPHICAL APPROACH TO WATER SCIENCES
L.M. Korytny
V.B. Sochava Institute of Geography, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Irkutsk, Russia
Keywords: geographical thinking, role functions, water problems, development of the geographical direction, birth of the Siberian school, ways and prospects
Abstract
Water Sciences are considered as a single bloc. It is proved that geography, as the only one that studies the complete “nature-economy-population” system in the disciplines of its cycle, can serve as a basis for improving the integral and sectoral methodology. Five main role functions of water have been identified: vital, energy-production, environment-forming, aquatorial and civilizational. Five major problems have been revealed, which arose from using water bodies and water resources: depletion of water resources leading to a quantitative water shortage; contamination of water bodies leading to their qualitative degradation; changes in the water regime and water balance of terrestrial landscapes and water bodies as a result of anthropogenic activities leading to disruption of moisture circulation, climate change and changes in aquatic biogeocenoses; problems arising from intersectoral contradictions as well as from the uneven spatial distribution of water resources, different rates and stages of economic growth and levels of socio-economic development, and hazardous natural phenomena. The gaps are examines, which arise in the absence of geographical thinking in land hydrology including examples of determining the maximum discharge in a catastrophic flood in the summer of 2019 on the Iya river in the city of Tulun and an unsatisfactory governmental attempt to keep the level of Lake Baikal within the 1 meter range. An analysis is made of the geographical direction in the Water Sciences. Presented are the results of studies of the Siberian landscape-hydrological school, the beginning of which is associated with the book by A.N. Antipov and L.M. Korytny entitled “Geographic Aspects of Hydrological Research (A Case Study of the River Systems of the Southern Minusinsk Depression)” published 40 years ago. The main directions of this school are experimental-landscape, geosystem-regional (basin), indicator, cartographic, classification, and organizational-coordination. The main ways of solving the problems of strengthening the geographical approach to the Water Sciences are proposed.
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