Ecological and geochemical research in ensuring sustainable urban development

Abstract

Introduction: In assessing the ecological state of urban agglomerations, geochemical studies of environmental components, primarily soils, bottom sediments of river network objects, plants, and atmospheric air play an important role. The results of geochemical studies make it possible to reliably determine the ecological state of the territories of cities and urban agglomerations (urbanized areas) of various functional purposes with various natural conditions and the level of technogenic and anthropogenic impact. Thus, environmental geochemistry, with its rich experience in fundamental and applied research, can provide serious assistance to specialists working in the current field of natural sciences, which is urbanology. However, to date, environmental geochemistry is not considered today as a complementary discipline to urbanology. The authors of the article aim to prove the opposite and demonstrate the need to include environmental geochemistry in the list of disciplines that define and strengthen the fundamental and applied purpose of urbanology.

Methodology: Cities are centers of concentration not only of the population, but also of significant masses of man-made substances entering the environment through industrial, transport and municipal emissions, waste and drains. In the urban environment, these products of human economic activity form local and regional technologic anomalies of pollutants in landscape components. Ecological and geochemical studies in the territories of urban agglomerations are part of a set of necessary measures aimed at improving legal, fundamental and applied methods and approaches for developing scientific and methodological foundations for forecasting, assessing and monitoring probable events in the process of intensive urbanization. The detailed methodology for collecting and processing geochemical samples of various components of the natural environment is reflected in the regulatory documents and is managed by state standards.

Results and discussion: Knowledge, experience and skills in environmental geochemistry play an important role in strengthening the fundamental foundations of urban science. A wide range of interdisciplinary knowledge in the system of “urbanology and city management” is determined by the solution of complex problems of urbanized territories, as well as the versatility of methods and alternative directions for their implementation. An objective assessment of the components of this kind of system is possible using the results of geochemical research.

Conclusion: The authors see the similarity between environmental geochemistry, on the one hand, and urbanology, on the other hand, in the integrativeness and interdisciplinarity of both natural science disciplines that study the problems of cities and urban systems from a variety of angles and in their totality. A conclusion is drawn about the great importance of environmental geochemistry in the formation and development of a current scientific direction that studies the features of the development of urbanized territories and systems, including under conditions of global climate change, against the background of natural and man-made disasters.