Natural conditions of geo-political importance of Crimean Peninsula

Analysis of the natural conditions of the Crimea which affect its geo-political situation, carried out at local and supra-local levels against the Black Sea – Azov Macroregion, showed that, at the local level, most important was always the natural duality of the Peninsula. The Crimean Mountains, lying in the southern part of the peninsula, had very rare settlement network but their foothills constituted the most densely populated area in the Crimea. This was facilitated by the favorable coastal environmental conditions such as mild climate and wealth and great diversity of wildlife. Between the mountains and the interior low land steppe there was a transitional low-mountain zone where land cultivation and herding were possible. Steppes to the end of the 19th c. constituted a wide and almost unpopulated buffer between the south of the Crimean Peninsula and the continental mainland. The natural environment of the steppes promoted nomadic pasturing but land cultivation was limited mostly by hardly accessible water. Relatively dense settlement on the steppe of the Kerch Strait shore was partly conditioned by abundant fisheries and communication advantages of the basin. In the Contemporary period most of the socio-economic activity in the Crimea is based on the supra-local functions. Local resources (especially energy and water) are insufficient to meet the demands of the current population and the economy, therefore supplies from the continent are necessary. Because of the cut-off of the Crimea from the rest of Ukraine in 2014, local resources must be much more exploited. At the supra-local level of importance a decisive role in all historical periods was played by the physico-geographical location of the Crimean Peninsula which created favorable geo-strategic conditions and favored development of maritime trade. In the Antiquity main centers of trade were ports with good access to the steppes: Panticapaeum (Bosporo ), located on the Kerch Strait and Feodosia and Chersonesos at the coasts of sheltered bays by the mountain foothills. During the Early Middle Ages cities of the northern coast of the Macroregion disappeared due to long-term destabilization (Migration Period), however, Bosporo and Chersonesos survived. In the Genoa - Tatar period the Macroregion experienced economic stabilization (Pax Mongolica) and the revival of long-distance trade, which was dominated by the city-states of Italy. The most important Genoese center, Kaffa, developed in place of the old Feodosia. Steppe hinterland was ruled by Tatars. During the Turkish period importance of this trade decreased, because the whole area was under the control of the Ottomans. The leading position of Kaffa (Kefe) continued under Turkish rule. The Transitional period was marked by the process of weakening of imperial Turkey and the expansion of Moscow, which fought for access to the sea. This resulted in an increased role of the Kerch Strait. At the end of the period, Russia seized the mouth of the Dnieper and Don as well as Kerch obtaining access to waters on both sides of the peninsula and annexing it. The role of the strait decreased in favor of the new port-fortress of Sevastopol. In the Russian period Moskow had already a definite advantage over Turkey. In the Crimea, in addition to the military function, recreation and balneotherapy developed. Russian expansion was halted as a result of the Crimean War, marking the end of the period. The Siege of Sevastopol confirmed strategie importance of this city. In the Contemporary period economic importance of the peninsula is based on highly developed tourism and balneotherapy. The role of the Kerch Strait increased with industrialization in southern Russia. Since when the peninsula separates the continental coast of Ukraine into two isolated parts, its importance has increased. The role of the geostrategic position of Crimea is maintained, especially because of a network of marine and land transport routes of hydrocarbons developed in this area since the mid- twentieth century. Sevastopol is still the main naval base in the norther part of the sea. Due to the ongoing „hybrid war” Ukraine has lost control over the Kerch Strait and Azov ports of this country have been blocked

Natural conditions of the population and settlement patterns - research concepts and methods

The paper deals with the natural conditions underpinning the distribution and development of the population and settlement patterns as well as their research methods at the Institute of Regional Geography, University of Warsaw. Following a preliminary evaluation of the role of individual natural environment components in these relations, same research methods of the Institute have been discussed and evaluated, including proposals of modifications

A study of natural settlement factors - physio-geographic boundaries and frontier settlements

Artykuł prezentuje badania, prowadzone w Zakładzie Geografii Regionalnej UW, które dotyczą przyrodniczych uwarunkowań osadnictwa.The paper discusses in greater detail a set of papers dealing with the issue of the natural conditions determining human activity, in the context of research carried out in the Department of Regional Geography of Warsaw University. The papers were focused on those features of the natural environment that were crucial for settlements, such as diversity, physical and geographical borders and individual qualities, as well as the so-called frontier settlements, a direct effect of nature-man interrelationship. Major approaches, methods and conclusions have been discussed, as well as the author's proposais relating to future prospects of such studies (proposed new approaches: "natural and humanistic" and "based on the confining factors")

Studies on natural conditions of the distribution of population and settlement at the Department of Regional Geography

Studies on the relations between natural conditions and human activity have been for a long time one of the main subjects of geographical research. The natural conditions of the distribution of population and settlement have been studied along two lines: historical-geographical - mostly by historians as a part of the methodology of the humanities, and the antropogeographical, which after the time of prosperity at the turn of the 19th century, began to decline, and, at present, is almost completely abandoned. One of the weaknesses of the antropogeographical research was the use of the measurable research methods to insufficient degree. At the end of the 60s at Warsaw University (B. Dumanowski with his team) the cartometrical and statistical studies on the problems of natural conditions of settlement which were based on the methodology of natural science were undertaken. It was found that a greater diversity of the environment and the physico-geographical borders favour, in general, the location and evolution of settlement, however the influence of these factors varies much according to the local circumstances. Besides the publications with measurable results of research, about one hundred Master's theses have been written. All that has constituted a sort of experimental range in the research of the Team, where the new approaches and methods were tested, regarding various areas and the degree of generalization and scales of the source maps used for research. The continuation of geographical research of the problems is justified and needed because of the long-year tradition of such studies in the field of geography and abundance of works on the matter, as well as the increasing tendency to conduct the interdisciplinary research. Such studies respond to the social demand which appears in connection with the globalization of the human civilization activity and its increasing pressure on Nature

High space–time bandwidth product imaging in low coherence quantitative phase microscopy

Current low coherence quantitative phase microscopy (LC-QPM) systems suffer from either reduced field of view (FoV) or reduced temporal resolution due to the short temporal coherence (TC) length of the light source. Here, we propose a hybrid, experimental and numerical approach to address this core problem associated with LC-QPM. We demonstrate high spatial resolution and high phase sensitivity in LC-QPM at high temporal resolution. High space–time bandwidth product is achieved by employing incoherent light source for sample illumination in QPM to increase the spatial resolution and single-shot Hilbert spiral transform (HST) based phase recovery algorithm to enhance the temporal resolution without sacrificing spatial resolution during the reconstruction steps. The high spatial phase sensitivity comes by default due to the use of incoherent light source in QPM which has low temporal coherence length and does not generate speckle noise and coherent noise. The spatial resolution achieved by the HST is slightly inferior to the temporal phase-shifting (TPS) method when tested on a specimen but surpasses that of the single-shot Fourier transform (FT) based phase recovery method. Contrary to HST method, FT method requires high density fringes for lossless phase recovery, which is difficult to achieve in LC-QPM over entire FoV. Consequently, integration of HST algorithm with LC-QPM system makes an attractive route. Here, we demonstrate scalable FoV and resolution in single-shot LC-QPM and experimentally corroborate it on a test object and on both live and fixed biological specimen such as MEF, U2OS and human red blood cells (RBCs). LC-QPM system with HST reconstruction offer high-speed single-shot QPM imaging at high phase sensitivity and high spatial resolution enabling us to study sub-cellular dynamic inside U2OS for extended duration (3 h) and observe high-speed (50 fps) dynamics of human RBCs. The experimental results validate the effectiveness of the present approach and will open new avenues in the domain of biomedical imaging in the future