Classification of dry land and ocean landscapes

Abstract

The paper presents the elaborated unified classification of the landscapes of different spheres: dry land (terrigene), oceanic, river, lake (aquatic); subterranean and mud flow, and also natural and anthropogenic. The landscape is viewed as a three-dimensional geosystem at all the taxonomic levels. At the level of the division the three-dimensionality is manifested by the formation of the landscape levels of the continents and oceans. The paper distinguishes the landscape levels of the dry land (hydromorphic, foothills, middle mountain, and highland) as well as of the ocean landscape (shelf, mainland slope, ocean bed, oceanic trenches). The following taxa are the basis for the classification: the landscape sphere – the environment contacts (atmo-, litho-, hydrosphere); order – the prevailing system generating component: liquid or solid; divisions – landscape levels of the continents and oceans; section – the differences at the level of landscape (geographic) zones; family – the degree of the illumination; class – morphostructural megarelief; subclass – morphostructural macrorelief; type – zonal differences; genus – morphology and the relief genesis (genetical landscape type); subgenus – lithology of the surface deposits; kind – the similarity of the prevailing countries. Each taxon considers the degree of the anthropogenic landscape transformation.