Геоекологія та географія

Abstract

The relations between geoecology, in its five main interpretations, and geographical disciplines are analyzed in order to find the most prospective concept for the further development of geoecology. It is found out that the geoecological concepts significantly "overlap" with, and even duplicate, established geographical and bioecological ideas. The idea of geoecology as an environmental science with no specific study object (Topchiev, 1996) is not fruitful owing to the threat to be "dissolved" in special systematic disciplines like environmental geomorphology etc. Geoecology as a study of biotic (Troll, 1972) and abiotic (Leser, 1997) interactions within an elementary landscape unit has a strong competitor in ecology - synecology (biogeocenology). Thus more advantageous seem to be ideas connecting geoecology and integrated geography (Bachynskyi, 1989; Hugget, 1995; Blumenstein et al., 2000). The concept of geoecology as an applied interdisciplinary social-and-natural science of geoecosystems (Bachynskyi, 1989) might be especially fruitful - it substitutes, to a great extent, classic "unified" geography, whose position is rather week nowadays. It is important now to develop geoecology from the conceptual level to the level of the established multidisciplinary approach by means of case studies based on modern research techniques.