From the Russian/Soviet landscape concept to the geosystem approach to integrative environmental studies in an international context

Abstract

Context The geosystem paradigm emerged in the USSR in the 1960s and offered improved operational tools for landscape assessment. However, its contributions to integrative environmental studies have yet to be widely recognized at an international level. Objectives The first objective of this paper is to describe the conceptual origins of the geosystem approach to resource management and its evolution in an international context. The second objective is to discuss its potential for enriching other methodologies used in integrative environmental studies. Methods The paper is based on a review of the European and Latin American literature on the geosystem concept and its use in integrative territorial and environmental studies. It traces the historic, epistemic and sociocultural trajectories of this paradigm. It also identifies some of the opportunities it offers and some of its weaknesses, and the problems that the geosystem paradigm can help to identify and resolve in contemporary integrative environmental studies. Results The trajectory of the geosystem paradigm in Russia and the USSR and its adaptation in several countries have demonstrated its usefulness for integrative territorial and environmental studies in different contexts and its complementarity with other scientific frameworks, such as Ecosystem Services and Landscape Ecology. Conclusions Geosystem-based approaches can contribute to international Landscape science and integrative socio-ecological and territorial frameworks with the theoretical and methodological findings made over its more than fifty-year history. The lessons learned from the evolution of the geosystem scientific paradigm will be useful for further studies and actions on environmental sustainability.