THEORETICAL - METHODOLOGICAL BASIS OF SPATIAL-TEMPORAL ANALYSIS OF THE FUNCTIONING PROCESSES OF AGRICULTURAL LANDSCAPES
Numerous works of Russian scientists are devoted to research of agricultural landscapes, their structure and functioning. "Agrolandscape is an integral, internally heterogeneous natural-agricultural geosystem, including both cultivated land and land of a different functional profile".Agricultural use of territories is one of the most widespread and effective types of anthropogenic transformation of landscapes. The specificity of agricultural production, especially agriculture, is determined by natural-territorial characteristics and depends on their properties and characteristics. At the same time, the natural component is the fundamental basis, within which agricultural and other functional zones are located, and serves as the main means of agricultural production. A group of authors formulated theconcept of an agrolandscape, according to which "an agrolandscape should be understood not as any land mass used in crop production, but only of a certain regional dimension, of the same geosystem level that is characteristic of a natural landscape".The study of the spatial-temporal organization of agricultural landscapes requires the study of the development of the territory from the moment of its formation, since many characteristics depend on the previous period of development. Therefore, in agrolandscape studies, it is impossible to do without historical analysis and the use of the most diverse data, including paleogeographic and archaeological. In addition, in the study of settlement, a large number of different empirical indicators and metrics are used, such as the scattering index, population density, population coefficient, closest neighborhood coefficient, and others.When analyzing the region, the composition and its historical and geographical specificity are considered, the main spatial structures of the region are analyzed.