Geobotanical Maps

(vegetation maps), maps representing the geographic distribution of typological subdivisions of vegetation (associations, groups of associations, formations), as well as their spatial combinations (complexes, combinations, series).

Geobotanical maps may be general or specialized, depending upon their purpose and the principles used in compiling them. General geobotanical maps show the distribution of natural units of the plant cover—native plant associations, such as spruce forests and feather-grass steppes—formed in the course of the cover’s historical development. General maps also reflect all the changes that the vegetation has undergone under the influence of human activity, indicating derivative associations of short and long duration, for example, birch forests where spruce forests once stood and farmland where there were feather-grass steppes. Specialized geobotanical maps represent vegetation features that are most important for a given agricultural use. They have different practical purposes (forage, forest, indication, and plant-resource maps) and contain supplementary symbols, including quantitative ones.

General geobotanical maps are subdivided into several categories according to their scale. There are detailed large-scale maps (1:5000-1:25,000), generalized large-scale maps (1:50,000-1:200,000), medium-scale maps (1:300,000-1:1,000,000), small-scale formational maps (1:1,500,000-1:4,000,000), and small-scale survey maps (1:5,000,000 and smaller). The latest small-scale survey geobotanical maps of the world, of parts of the world, and of the USSR are included in the Physicogeographic World Atlas (1964). The most detailed of the published geobotanical maps of the USSR is on a scale of 1:4,000,000 (1954). The geobotanical maps of individual countries and parts of countries are included in many comprehensive atlases, for example, the Atlas de France (1954) and the atlases of the Uzbek SSR (1963), of the Transbaikalia (1967). Geobotanical maps are also published separately Specialized geobotanical maps (forage, forest, raw materials) are contained in many atlases, such as those of the Leningrad (1967) and Kustanai (1963) oblasts.