#聚落分布

The results of this study provide new insights into some aspects of settlement and early economic activity on Russia's southern frontier. The authors attempt to reconstruct the key physical and geographic features and patterns of anthropogenic impact associated with land use in a microregion of present-day Tambov Oblast, located at the southern margin of the Great East European Forest and the threshold of the Great Steppe. A key research question is which factors influenced the distribution of population and economic assets. The mid-19th-century distribution of anthropogenic load was compared with its present-day distribution in the microregion. The source data include historical maps, descriptive sources, and modern remote sensing data, including aerial and satellite imagery. The study employs an interdisciplinary approach, combining geographic information system (GIS) technologies with historical methods (particularly the historical-genetic method) to interpret observational data. The model captures both the spatial patterns of mid-19th-century settlement and economic activity and the long-term trends in land development that persist to the present. The findings lend further support to the hypothesis that Russian settlers tend to prefer transitional zones between distinct landscape types when selecting sites for settlement and land use.