| Abstract: | A method is proposed for the use of large-scale “landscape-functional” maps (depicting interrelationships between landscape structure, land use, and environmental impacts) in the identification and explanation of geochemical anomalies within urbanized areas. Landscape-functional complexes or basic elementary landscapes located within different zones of human activity, serve as the basic units of mapping. An excerpt from a landscape-functional map of an unnamed mining-metallurgical center in a semi-arid mountain basin environment is provided as an illustration of how such maps reveal spatial associations between trace-element concentrations in soil, snow, and stream bottom sediments; location in respect to major pollution sources (proximity, upslope or downslope position, leeward or windward orientation); and frequency and intensity of trace-element transport (mass movements, stream and overland flow, prevailing winds). Translated from: Vestnik Moskovskogo Universitete, geografiya, 1986, No. 5, pp. 88-94. |
