Landscape science in Ukraine: The current state and trends

Abstract

The state of landscape science in Ukraine has been considered since the early 2000s, when, moving away from the Soviet canons of this science, it acquired its own face and its leaders. From that time until now, two general trends in the development of Ukrainian landscape science have been set: expansion in the field of landscape research and strengthening the theoretical foundations of its concept. Currently, in Ukraine the landscape is studied in three academic areas—landscape science, landscape ecology and transdisciplinary geoecology. There are different points of view on their essence and correlation among Ukrainian scientists, and they are discussed in the article. There is also no consensus on understanding the concept of the landscape, because there are at least three interpretations of it: the landscape as a general metascientific category, the landscape as a real object, and the landscape as a representation or an image of reality. The article discusses the current state, gaps and prospects for the development of landscape science in Ukraine regarding the main problem areas of ​​this science, namely landscape theory, landscape mapping, dynamics of landscapes, their anthropization, humanitarian dimensions of the landscape, landscape planning, landscape modeling, physical-geographical regionalization.