Age and recent evolution of landscape elements of the Kama-Keltma lowland (the Upper Kama River basin)

The problem of identifying relic, conservative and progressive landscape elements within forest and bog geosystems of the Upper Kama River basin became resolvable as a result of complex paleogeographic investigations within the Kama-Keltma lowland. The principal components of the study were the application of the Earth remote sensing methods and identification of the relative and absolute ages (direct dating) of bog, alluvial and underlying sediments of ancient water reservoirs. The physiognomic and morphological differences between structures of different ages were determined by the degree of their resistance to exodynamic processes and climate changes. Relic landscape elements are individual structural units of the landscape (stow, groups of stows) in which natural components, or their combinations correspond to the natural conditions of ancient geosystems with a period of formation exceeding the time of formation of the landscape invariant under consideration. Their stability in time is explained by complete or partial isolation from matter and energy flows generated by adjacent geosystems. As a rule, this results from a higher location of such geosystems among other territorial complexes which makes them inaccessible to geodynamic and geochemical processes within the geosystems of middle and low levels of the landscape. Conservative and progressive landscape elements are mostly confined to low and medium terrain levels. The most dynamic geosystems, i.e. natural aquatic complexes, are located at the lowest elevations of the relief. The studies have shown that conservative landscape elements could not be identified using the pre-established criteria for the most common landscape elements due to their large proportion in the structure of geosystems of different ages. These geosystems were defined as natural territorial complexes that do not meet the criteria for being relic or progressive landscape elements. Despite the seeming simplicity of solving the problem, the objective identifying of such geosystems will depend on the objective identifying of elements “from the past” and “from the future”, i. e. proper identification of the boundaries of relic and progressive landscape elements.

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