River Basin Concept to Turn Belgorod into a Park Region

News continues to emerge in the press and in the scientific literature on the climate change, insisting that the climate continues to warm. The influence and consequences upon water resources aren’t easy to forecast accurately, but they could be very serious and even dangerous. Among possible consequences could be decrease in water quantity and quality, deterioration and even destruction of ecosystems, shrinkage in food acreage, and others.

The scientists of Belgorod State National Research University also contribute to retrieving data on description and explanation of earth and relationships between the natural and human environments essential to manage the growth, development of cities and regions where people live.

According to Professor Fyodor Lisetsky, Doctor of Geographic Sciences, and Head of the BelSU Centre for Aerospace and Ground Monitoring of Objects and Natural Resources, “territorially” speaking, it is necessary to define a unit of geo-space where natural, economic, social and demographic processes can be harmonised. This can provide integration of local community based on sustainable nature management to maintain economic stability.

Nature-created, river basin as an ecological system can become such geo-space unit. In 2011, what first was an idea of Governor of the Belgorod region Enveny Savchenko, was powered through by scientists, and the Belgorod region became the first in Russia to employ basin concept based geo-planning.

Geo-planning should not be understood as simply using fitness landscapes or adaptive landscapes. It comprises nature resources management in the system of environmentally balanced and sustainable economy. Hydro-ecological monitoring organised in a river basin allows obtaining more integral information on agrichemical migration and accumulation within the basin.

Viktor Sochava, a well-known geographer, phyto-sociologist and landscape scientist, insisted on regarding ecological relationships of a human within the framework of “dominions of Noosphere”, where geographic factors are back-grounded by social ones, and landscapes and social systems are converged.

Human activity is not an anthropogenic self-centeredness but mutual creative work where humans see the trends in nature development, understand its demands, and adjust their activity accordingly. It is anticipated to grow into co-evolutional development of nature and humanity. Focusing on this approach results in creation and adoption of long-term natural resources management systems, based on controlled nature-anthropogenic structure. The resonance anticipated will lead to ultimate goals coordination and mutual intergrowth of routine rhythm of human life and natural environment.

As a “dominion of Noosphere”, park-region is to present a harmonious territory of natural or cultural landscape in its natural borders, developed for the purpose of creating a long-term nature management systems, based on regulated nature-anthropogenic structure and human-nature mutual creation process.

To transform every district of the region into a part of a park region, it is essential to turn to the concept of river basin management, which is closely interrelated to the ecological projects and programmes, already realized in the Belgorod region.

To develop a project in river basin management, several successive steps to take were specified:

1. actualization of large-scale digital cartographical documents and records related to certain object, using satellite earth probing data;
2. GIS-mapping of landscape structures based on paragenetic and landscape structure of the territory that will recognize modern ecological and economical state of the region;
3. ground observation of land resources to define optimal purposes to use them for, and their ecological state;
4. diagnostics of ecological and economic balance of lands, and the degree of their natural protection;
5. ecological arrangement of lands adjacent to hydrographic networks by means of marking landscape substantiated borders of coastal and water conservation zones;
6. plow-land types mapping according to slope grades and defining priorities for working areas for agricultural biologization;
7. optimization of farm lands: substantiation of areas for cultivated grasslands with multi-herb and target grass mixtures, as well as for haying, potato growing, vegetable farming, forest amelioration, creating yards of bees, land resting and for realization of the programmes for conservation of disturbed, degraded and low-productive lands;
8. substantiation of project decisions for tourism and recreation spheres development;
9. territorial marking of new functional zones: natural areas of preferential protection, equipped water springs, entomologic micro nature reserves, etc.;
10. development of top-priority and promising measures to achieve the schedule- integrated performance targets of the projects;
11. substantiation of ecological monitoring system: sampling point, methods and frequency of sampling, and project-determined indexes;
12. building up “River Basin Geo-Informational System”.

Therefore, using river basin-based territory management will provide a more effective control (while putting less labour effort) of processes both related to hydrologic cycle and land use conditions.

Decision on nature resources management based on river basin concept is very promising for environment-oriented nature management. It can also provide less or no contradictions in land and water management decisions, for there are all-basin challenges that this management organization can be more favourable and efficient to solve.

Employing river basin management organisation involves creating inter-regional bodies commissioned with basin-wide powers. These bodies are supposed to distinguish the factors causing degradation of natural resources, nature management problems within the basin, define optimal ways and means to solve them, and to improve environmental situation.

The scientists of the BelSU Centre for Aerospace and Ground Monitoring of Objects and Natural Resources strongly believe in the ability of river basin planning as main approach to nature resources management, on the one hand, to contribute to sustainable development of agricultural territories of the Belgorod region, and towards the full enjoyment of the rights for healthy and favourable ecological environment, and to creating comfortable living environment in the region. On the other hand, realization of river basin planning creates a beneficial experience that can be very rewarding to embrace by other regions of Russia and the world.

Suggested materials for further reading: Basin Conception of Nature Use in Rurl Areas of Belgorod Oblast by F. Lisetsky and A. Panin in Journal of the Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Issue 1, 2013. ISSN: 0869-3730