Invariants of Sochava’s Geosystem as a Basis for Landscape Mapping

This article presents a methodology for landscape mapping based on the integration of long-term series of multispectral data and morphometric characteristics of the relief for various hierarchical levels. Using the example of the Central Forest Reserve and its adjacent territory, where both indigenous and anthropogenically modified geosystems are combined, it is shown that the identification of reflection invariants and relief order parameters allows us to obtain a display of landscape states that are stable in space and time. Verification of the landscape invariants on an extensive array of field data confirms their close relationship with the characteristics of the vegetation and soil cover. The classes obtained by segmenting the territory based on the ratio of landscape map invariants are well discriminated by both the original multispectral information and morphometric characteristics and field data, fully and objectively displaying the states of all geosystems in the study area. The results of the study demonstrate that the accumulation of remote-sensing data and the development of methods for their analysis open new opportunities for putting V.B. Sochava’s ideas about the dynamic nature of geosystems into practice. They transform the theoretical concept of invariants into a fully developed methodology for analyzing landscape structure and into a practical toolkit for landscape mapping and monitoring.