This Is Our Geography!

Geographer's Day is a professional holiday for about 300 thousand Russians (the whole city!). They accept congratulations on August 18.

An excellent reason to ask SSU Rector, Doctor of Geography Alexei Chumachenko, who headed the Faculty of Geography for about 10 years, for a comment on this issue.

– Alexey Nikolaevich, how did it happen that the geographers' holiday is so young? After all, the ancient Greek scientist Eratosthenes coined this term back in the III–II centuries BC.

– It was time to do it a long time ago! In 2019, the Russian Geographical Society took the initiative to establish a Geographer's Day in recognition of the great achievements of geographers and to popularize geographical knowledge. The first celebration took place in 2020, in the year of the 175th anniversary of the Society established by decree of Nicholas I.

I have been in the Russian Geographical Society since I was a student. When I studied at the Geography Department of Moscow State University in the 1980s, one of our teachers, an outstanding geographer and cartographer, Professor Konstantin Alekseevich Salishchev– introduced us to the Moscow branch of the society.

The society went through different periods. The situation changed dramatically when the country's top officials drew attention to him. Since tsarist times, since the founding of the Geographical Society, it has been prestigious at the state level to support its activities.

Today, the RGS really uses all forms, means and channels to popularize its activities. For example, he organizes research expeditions to poorly studied regions of the country, which are of interest not only to geographers, but also to historians, archaeologists, ethnographers, and art historians.

– What definition of geography do you consider the most comprehensive?

– Geography is a comprehensive discipline. It includes a very wide range of diverse areas that can be attributed to both natural and humanitarian. Socio-economic geography, political geography, and there is also climatology, meteorology, soil science, geomorphology, biogeography, glaciology and cryolithology, geo-urban studies and others. This diversity makes it possible to apply approaches and tools from different scientific fields.

– When and under what circumstances did the training of university geographers at SSU begin?

– Geography has always been taught at our university. And in 1938, the faculty was opened after the government decided to allocate geographical specialties at Leningrad, Moscow, Kazan and Saratov universities into separate faculties. That's how we ended up among the first four faculties established in our country. And this is due to the fact that the geographical school of Saratov has always been very strong.

– What names have made the university faculty iconic and famous?

– There are many of them. It would be right to mention your teachers and colleagues first of all. Even as a student at Moscow State University, I already knew the Saratov scientist, who was often referred to in his lectures and scientific works by the capital's teachers. In the 1970s and 80s, the Department of Geomorphology and Geodesy of SSU was headed by a world-renowned scientist, Professor Victor Filosofov. I was very interested in his scientific direction on the use of geographical maps to search for minerals. I had no idea then that since 2001 I would be the head of this department, renamed the Department of Geomorphology and Geoecology. By the way, the very first head of the department in 1960 was also a graduate of the Geography Faculty of Moscow State University – Professor Valentin Lebedev.

In the 1990s, the Department of Geomorphology and Geoecology was headed by a prominent scientist, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, laureate of the State Prize, Professor Gleb Ivanovich Khudyakov. Another equally well–known representative of the geographical school of Saratov University is geographer Pavel Savelyevich Kuznetsov. And the current generation of remarkable scientists of our faculty has serious weight in geographical science.

– Alexey Nikolaevich, what motivated you personally to choose a geography major?

– Geographical maps. I've loved them since high school, and I've been doing orienteering. But the geography department was not a childhood dream. I went there after the army, only during the service I realized what I wanted. Once, physicists from Moscow State University came to our unit with the task of inviting recruits related to radio engineering to preparatory courses. I asked, do geographers need us? They shrugged their shoulders, but the very fact that there is such a work faculty made us think in this direction.

– And how was the Saratov Scientific School of Complex Territorial Analysis of Makarov and Chumachenko created at the faculty?

– In the early 1990s, already being a teacher at SSU, I came to Moscow State University and met a senior colleague, began to tell him about working at the Department of Physical Geography at Saratov University. It confused me a little at the time, because I did not understand the scope of my knowledge, because I am a cartographer. And suddenly he says: How lucky you are, you will reach another level in cooperation with various geographers. And he was right.

In 1992, we started working together with the current dean of the Faculty of Geography, Vladimir Zinovievich Makarov, a physical geographer and landscape scientist. And we quickly got orders for the application of forces and knowledge.

We worked in a variety of ways: This includes environmental monitoring, medical geography, and urban ecology. The Faculty of Geography has developed new approaches and techniques for integrated territorial analysis of urban and rural areas, industrial and transport sites, and lands for various purposes. And a characteristic feature of these studies is the mandatory and quite diverse use of geoinformation mapping methods.

This became the topic of his doctoral dissertation in 2001 – "Ecological and geographical mapping of cities".

Alexei Chumachenko, Vladimir Makarov, and an oceanologist Arhur Chilingarov at an RGS meeting

– Ten years ago, the presentation of the Educational Atlas of the Saratov region took place. It was created and published by the geographers of the SSU. You took an active part in this project as the editor-in-chief. How much is atlas in demand today?

– Without too much modesty, I will say that the atlas turned out to be a good example of a classic work in the field of atlas cartography. Not all regions and even countries have such atlases. This is a very serious voluminous work: on 144 pages, in six sections of the publication, the Saratov region is represented by more than a hundred bright maps with accompanying texts: nature, population and social development, agriculture, ecology, history and cultural heritage, the city of Saratov. By the way, it was published with the support of the Russian Geographical Society, and we won a grant at that time.

Today, atlas cartography is a little on the periphery of consciousness, the emphasis is on the applied nature of "one-day maps", but I am sure they will return to it more than once, and atlases will always appear. It is like a fundamental science, without it applied directions will not be able to develop.

– To what extent is the life of the world around us reflected in what geographers, including regional ones, specify on modern maps?

– Academician Nikolai Nikolaevich Baransky, who laid the foundations of Soviet economic geography, is known for his catch phrases about cartography: "Any geographical study begins and ends with a map", "The map is the alpha and omega of geography". Live a day today so that you don't use any card during the day, even pizza delivery is associated with it. Cartography permeates our whole life, because everything is geographically determined. All geographers (and not only them!) necessarily have to work with maps. There are already a lot of maps, they have different goals and degrees of detail, different recipients and users.

I am happy to teach "classical" cartography and topography in the first courses of the Geography Faculty. At the same time, I warn my students that this is only a database, in two or three years you can "upload" completely new knowledge to it.

I love teaching. I always remember my first teaching experience with humor. When I came out with my PhD thesis for defense, I already knew more about this field than my supervisor, since I purposefully dealt with the topic of creating maps of nature based on the results of interpretation of scanned space images. He invited me to give a lecture to geographers. And here I have an audience of 180-200 people at Moscow State University. There is no lecturing experience. I went out and was in such a hurry to "embrace the immensity" that in 20 minutes I gave out everything I knew on this topic. My supervisor asks, "Is that it? That's it... then go!" And he continued the lecture for me.

– What you do with your colleagues is directly related to geoecology. And for any Saratov resident, the most important of the environmental problems is the present state and future of the Volga. Now the deputies of the State Duma have appealed to the government with a proposal to develop a new federal project to clean up the Volga. What do you personally consider necessary to put into it and how would you assess the effectiveness of previous efforts?

– Ten or fifteen years ago, we were seriously engaged in this research. And, strange as it may seem, the Volga had relatively cleared by this time, because many industries had stopped. The situation, which is not very good from the point of view of economics, has played to the benefit of the ecology of the river. But now a new stage of studying the environmental situation around the Volga and its basin is required, a comprehensive project is needed that would include scientific research. Industry, transport, and agriculture can undoubtedly negatively affect the life of the river. In addition, the Volga basin is a densely populated area.

The initiative of the State Duma to improve the river appeared, in my opinion, very timely: the problem exists, and attention should be paid to it. Moreover, such large-scale projects have already been successfully implemented in our country, including with the participation of RGS.

– Centuries have passed since the great geographical discoveries. What are the prospects for young geographers today?

– There are still enough "white spots". However, they have moved from the area of territorial discoveries to the content area. I can reassure future geographers that their profession is eternal. Although I will not dissemble, this is a very complex science, and it has not yet moved one hundred percent to the very new methods, techniques and approaches that our time requires. Everything is in your hands!

I am happy to congratulate geographers of all fields, all specialists of this unique complex science on their professional holiday! I wish them a lot of health and strength to explore the world around them, share their discoveries with students who find it important and interesting to study geography!