Regina А. Medvedeva

Background. A large number of formulations of requirements, presented by authors as principles of teaching, devalue the significance and achievements of theoretical didactics. Their transformation in accordance with the requirements of logic and the criteria of the concept of "principle of teaching" is a promising direction in solving the issue of the number of principles. Purpose. To identify trends in the formulation of teaching principles in domestic pedagogy (didactics) in the second half of the 20th – early 21st centuries and to determine ways to solve the problem of the number of didactic principles. Materials and methods. The study uses formulations of requirements for the learning process, called by the authors the principles of learning and presented in textbooks and teaching aids on pedagogy and didactics, published in our country in the second half of the 20th – early 21st centuries. The main errors in the formulation of principles of learning and ways to overcome them are identified based on content-terminological and structural analysis. Results. The reasons for the uncontrolled growth in the number of formulations of teaching principles in pedagogy have been determined. They are: 1) violation of the hierarchy of the main parts of pedagogy, as a result of which the rules of teaching and recommendations developed in the course of methodological research in the field of teaching individual subjects, as well as the development of technologies, are elevated to the rank of general didactic requirements, passing them off as teaching principles; 2) lack of rigor in presenting the results of pedagogical (didactic) research, violation of the requirements of logic for the formulation of laws, principles and rules leads confusion of concepts. One of the ways to solve the problem of formulating principles is to conduct a structural and content-terminological analysis based on the requirements of logic. The principles of teaching are formulated in the form of a narrative sentence, the content of which presents a dialectical relationship between the system-forming elements of the learning process: the teacher's activities and the students' activities to transform the content of learning. The dialectical nature of the connection between the system-forming elements of the learning process determines the existence of principles that reveal the source, mechanism and direction of learning development.

The study presents a new scheme of zoning of modern gully erosion in a large region of the Russian Federation. Automated landscape zoning by means of artificial neural networks was carried out in order to determine the natural and anthropogenic conditions for the development of the gully network. Erosion zoning was implemented on the basis of large-scale geoinformation mapping of gullies with visual interpretation of high- and ultra-high-resolution satellite images for 2017–2021. The basins of small rivers (1314 in total) with an average area of 91 km² were taken as operational territorial units. 22 688 gullies (including their lateral branches) were identified in the study area; their average length was 65 m, and the total length of the gully network was about 1500 km. The mean density of the gully network constituted 12 m/km², and the maximum density reached 301 m/km². This indicator indirectly reflects the intensity of gully formation and was used for the zoning of gully erosion. Most of the studied river basins (84%) had either no gully dissection or very weak and weak gully erosion. The main reasons for the widespread damping of gully erosion are related to changes in land use and in the climate system, as well as to an evolutionary factor—the transition of many gully forms to the balka stage of development.

Gully erosion is a major soil degradation process on arable land. Therefore, it is important to better understand the spatial and temporal patterns of this linear erosion process, considering the impacts of land use and climate change. The main objective of this study was to analyse the spatial and temporal patterns of permanent gully development in a study area of 123 300 km² located in the eastern periphery of the European boreal zone (southern taiga, mixed and deciduous forests and forest‐steppe). In this study, visual interpretation of remote sensing data is used to detect changes in permanent gully channel length and density for each river basin between 1950/1970 and 2017/2021. Currently, 22 688 permanent gullies have been identified in the study area, their average length being 64 m, with the total gully network length reaching 1450.3 km. The average density of the gully network for 2017/2021 is 16 m km⁻²; the maximum value reaching 471 m km⁻². During the period under study (c. 50 years), there was a widespread reduction in gully density by 184 m km⁻² on average (i.e. from 100–500 m km⁻² in 1950/1970 to −2 in 2017/2021). Linear and areal channel changes were determined for 304 active gullies over the 2009/2016 period. The average linear gully growth rate during this period is 0.6 m year⁻¹, whereas the areal growth rate is 28 m² year⁻¹. There is a clear reduction of gully erosion in the study area. Analysis of the gully network density in relation to land use changes (i.e. cultivated, forest and pasture area) did not reveal any significant relationship. It is concluded that the reduction of gully density in the study area is caused by the natural evolution of these linear erosion forms and their transformation into balkas (i.e. small, dry, flat‐bottomed valleys).

Using the method of mapping by high resolution satellite imagery mapping, a study was made of the key areas which are located in the southern part of the forest, forest-steppe and steppe zones of...