ИСТИНА

Paper presents methodological and scientific results of landscape studies conducting for the last 10 years in the Northwestern Bulgaria, municipality of Belogradchik, in the framework of long field course for the high-year students of Moscow State University specialized in landscape and environmental science. The territory in study has a high level of landscape diversity and a particular composite land use and land cover past and contemporary patterns. It also contains several unique landscape and geomorphological phenomena such as widely-known Belogradchik rocks. Landscape maps in different scales were created with the use of field and remote sensing data for the territory of “Belogradchik rocks” natural monument (36 sq. km, scale 1:25 000) and for the whole territory of Belogradchik municipality (300 sq. km, scale 1:100 000). During different years of field course we elaborate some landscape-based methods for environmental assessment and learn our students to detect in field the condition of forest stands, to distinguish and mapped abandoned agricultural lands, to reveal landscape aesthetics with the preference to recreational use and plan tourists tracks and routes with high scenic value. All the results of such studies are mapped and also presented as thematic layers in GIS and in Web-GIS application “Moscow State University’s Geoportal”. Landscape units mapped in different scales are a reliable base for spatially explicit environmental assessments and planning of nature conservation measures that’s why landscape field studies may be considered as an inherent part of higher education in environmental science as a whole. In recent years the area became a field of geoconservation investigation and field practice for the students of the University of Mining and Geology “St. ivan Rilski” Sofia. Тhanks to the complex landscape and geological investigation of both universities and the scientific development of the remarkable geodiversity of the area in 2015 Belogradchik rocks gained the status of Aspiring UNESCO Geopark.