Methodology and experience of landscape-limnological research into lake-basin systems of Ukraine

Abstract

We discuss the issues related to the methodology and technique of landscape-limnological research into lake-basin systems of Ukraine. The findings are based on many years of these authors’ field expedition-based and semipermanent station-based landscape and Limnological investigations, primarily for flat territories of Polissia. Basin approach is used, and the lake‒catchment object is treated as a complex geosystem combining the lake’s natural aquatic complex and the catchment’s natural (natural-anthropogenic) complex; the ideas of landscape-limnological analysis are also used. An outline is given of the geological structure of the lake-basin systems and some geochemical characteristics of the water body; we compiled the landscape schematic maps for the lake’s catchment and natural aquatic complex at the level of stows, aquatic substows and facies. For displaying the state of the systems we suggest a number of landscape and limnometric parameters. The cartographic models, generated for the landscape structure, are open to replenishment with heterogeneous information (ranging from paleogeographical data to contemporary ecomonitoring results) and can serve as the basis for the creation of a multipurpose cadastre of water bodies with retarded water exchange as well as for the substantiation of the balanced nature management schemes on territories beyond lakes.