The chairman of Moscow University's Department of Biogeography reviews the various approaches being used in biogeography: habitat studies, the species composition of flora and fauna, the regional approach, the ecological approach and the historical approach. He outlines future research problems of biogeographers: the elimination of natural infection foci of disease, the rehabilitation of expanding areas in tailings, slag heaps and other wasteland, the biological purification of water, the conservation of natural communities and the creation of more productive artificial communities.