Bioclimatic constituent of natural recreational potential of the territory defines comfortability of perception and welfare of a human. Aim of this work is definition of potential positive and negative impacts of different climatic factors and their dynamics in piedmont areas of the Ukrainian Carpathians, important recreational region of our country.  Bioclimatic constituent of natural recreational potential is evaluated  from comfortability of climate for healthy human body and life activity point of view. Materials and methods of research. The work is based on the results of modeling of mean daily values of air temperature, wind speed and relative humidity by RCP4.5 scenario (RCP4.5 – Representative Concentration Pathways; pathway of change of greenhouse gases emission concentrations for its average level) from 2021 to 2050 year and data of Climatic Cadastre of Ukraine (1961 –1990) on three stations of piedmont areas of  Carpathians. Research results and discussion. There has been fulfilled research of possible bioclimatic potential of the Ukrainian Carpathians and trends of its dynamics till 2050 subject to development of RCP4.5 climate change scenario. Evaluation of bioclimatic peculiarities of this area has been done due to complex indices characterizing thermal state of human:  equivalent-effective temperature, indices of severity of climate (Bodman index, coerced temperature, face skin temperature, conditional temperature) and indices of continentality of climate. There has been done analyses of potential anomalies of mean perennial climatic characteristics according to the norm. Conclusion. The complex bioclimatic indices will allow to form new conditions and opportunities for improving quality of life and safety of human.  Equivalent-effective temperature in piedmont of the Ukrainian Carpathians in average annually will raise relatively to climatic norm, and in Transcarpathia it will decrease. Though during warm period of the year is mainly expected to be increased in the whole area, which will lead to improvement of recreational conditions and may attract more holiday-makers. Comfortable conditions (moderate warm and warm) here are possible from April to October with maximum in summer season. Values of expected bioclimatic indices in average during winter will stay in the same limits as norm, though their anomalies can be both negative and positive. Thus, in this scenario of climatic changes there is no forecast of substantial deterioration of winter recreational activity conditions. The results of research may be used for developing of strategy and plans for adaptation for climate change on both national and regional levels.

Modern tourism development trends are characterized by the growth of tourist flows, the emergence and development of a wide range of means of transportation, vehicle-to-population ratio and, as a consequence, increased tourist mobility of people. These trends expand the geographical boundaries of travel and make regions, including mountainous, which were not previously visited by tourists, accessible.
The country's transport system, ensuring the accessibility of tourist facilities in mountainous areas, has a positive impact on the economy, standard of living and quality of life of the people living in these regions. At the same time, modern transport infrastructure and intensified transport flows negatively affect the condition of mountain ecosystems, sometimes leading to their complete degradation, which reduces the attractiveness of these areas for tourists and deprives these regions of the possibility of sustainable development in the future. 
The work substantiates the necessity and possible directions of ecologisation of the transport component of the tourist product in order to ensure sustainable development of mountainous areas. The development of the global tourism industry is accompanied by the deterioration of the habitat, which is peculiar to not only urban agglomerations, but also of mountainous areas. Growth of vehicle-to-population ratio and passenger traffic, caused by increased tourist mobility, is accompanied by an intensification of negative impacts on various elements of ecosystems. In this regard, the search for ways of ecologisation of the transport component of the tourist product for sustainable development of tourism in mountainous regions is a relevant scientific and technical problem. 
The objective of the article is to substantiate the necessity and search for the directions of ecological modernization of the transport component of the tourist product for mountainous areas.
The information base was made up of scientific publications of domestic and foreign authors on the problems of "green" modernisation of the tourism and transport industry as its most important component; data of the Federal and regional state statistics services, analytical materials of national and international environmental organisations. In this paper, the retrospective analysis of the statistical data received from open sources for the five-year period was applied.
The growth of the tourist flow to the Krasnodar Region was accompanied by a corresponding increase in traffic flows and passenger traffic. In 2016, the volume of road transport alone increased to 310.1 million people. Over the past five years, the transport sector has been growing steadily (+275%). Its contribution to the regional tourist product reached 10%.
The level of vehicle ownership in the region is quite high and amounted to 306 vehicles per thousand people in 2016. Insufficient development of public transport and the lack of a restriction system at the regional level has led to the fact that the majority of the informal sector, which accounts for up to 60% of the tourist flow, uses personal vehicles to travel to the sea and ski resorts of the region, which makes it difficult to assess and regulate this segment.
The most important condition for the environmental modernization of transport is the setting of relevant goals and objectives in the strategic documents of regional development, their vertical and horizontal matching with national, regional and sectoral strategies, programmes and plans. Practice shows the lack of coordination between the concepts of transport system development and its ecologisation at the regional level with the national goals and strategic objectives. This leads to aggravation of environmental problems, including reduction of atmospheric air qu

The relationship between the nature of the spring flood and the geological history of the drained territories is studied. The main method of research is system analysis. As it was established, the Upper Kolyma catchment area displays both simi-larities in its physico-geographic environments and differences in its geologic histories. Its left side is related to the Inyali-Debin Synclinorium and its right side is related to the Ayan-Yuryak Anticlinorium. The Permian-Mid Jurassic terrigenous sequences of these structures are similar by their composition and were forming in turbidite conditions. Since the upper Jurassic through the lower Cretaceous, when the Indighirka-Omolon Superterrane and the North Asian Craton were interacting, the synclinorium was subject to intense shifting and collisional pressure impacts, which had caused inner defects in rock-forming minerals, whereas in the territory of the Ayan-Yuryak Anticlinorium the same processes were less important.
The results of geologic events, which proceeded in these territories more than 130 000 000 years ago, were that the processes of hydrolysis of silicate and alumosilicate rocks and their alteration to clay minerals had a greater significance in the Inyali-Debin Synclinorium than in the less active anticlinorium area. So, slopes have their debris and gruss soil cover  usually consisting of loam and sandy loam rocks. Hypergenic and tectonic fractures have clay infillings. In the early June, depth of thawing is usually less than 10 cm over valley slopes. 
Melt and rain water form slope drainage, with its evaporation value 20-30 % greater than in the right-side catchment area. Within the Ayan-Yuryak Anticlinorium area, the rock weathering products are coarser by their fraction; therefore the thawing depth of frozen layer is everywhere more than 20 cm as soon as at the end of May. The slope run-off of melt and rain water transforms into the subsurface drainage type without any significant evaporation and ground saturation loss. Therefore, the Kolyma right-side tributaries have their maximum flow module 20-30 % in average higher than the left tributaries. The paper as well presents other differences in flow parameters as due to peculiar geologic histories of the left-side and right-side territories. Proceeding from all this said above, we conclude that, in order to predict calculation water maximums in high-water seasons, researchers must take into consideration both physiсo-geographic features and area-specific geologic histories.

Understanding the reasons for land use change over time is necessary for optimal planning and management of urban areas. Identification of alterations and the patterns they reflect allows prediction of future changes, and appropriate planning can then be undertaken. In the last two decades, the city of Kerman, Iran, has gone through several identifiable changes, including significant increases in its urban population and growth of its urban residential areas. As a result of population increase, provision for Kerman’s human needs, which requires extensive use of natural resources, will undoubtedly increase the demand for land resources, both in agricultural and non-agricultural sections. Due to the fact that development without planning leads to inappropriate use of lands and resources, the present study was set to contribute in planning through an analysis of land use changes in various areas of Kerman city between 1989 and 2017, and to predict probable changes during the next ten years through performing visible and near infrared data of Landsat TM/ETM+/OLI. Classification of land use classes, and analysis of methods and their changes, was carried out by ENVI 5.1 and IDRISI 17 software. Maximum likelihood method was selected for Image classification. Classified images were applied as input for Land Change Modeler (LCM). Results indicated that by 2017, LCM had approximately doubled, bare surface had decreased, and vegetation had significantly increased. Furthermore, the results of Cellular Automata (CA) Markov method in 2017 showed that according to the predictions the area of bare surface and vegetation have respectively decreased by 118 and 219 hectares and the area of builtup land had not changed significantly when compared with the base year 2017. This research is anticipated to help local managers better view on the addressed land use system for improved land use management strategies upon urban expansion balance.

Aim. Over the past decades, the recreational load in Priol’khonie has increased significantly, numerous new rec-reation centers have been built, which led to the expansion of the road network – since 1982, it has increased here by almost 13 times. Its growth contributed to the intensification of water erosion and deflation. In this regard, it is important to determine the dependencies of the development and activation of linear erosion on the intensity of the recreation impact of the Priol’khonie. Two study areas are selected for analysis that clearly differed in the degree of anthropogenic disturbance - highly developed, adjacent to Bazarnaya Bay and poorly de-veloped, which is located on the shore of Tutai Bay.
Research methods. The disturbance of the territory are estimated by the length of the roads, the density of the road network, the number, and area of housing, including, separately, intended for the reception of tourists. To obtain quantitative data, high-resolution space images of free access are used. During the fieldwork, the landscape descriptions of test plots in different landforms, accounting and description of linear erosion forms, installation of benchmarks  were made, also orthophoto maps were compiled using the the quadrocopter survey.
Research results. The area of the Tutay Bay is one and a half times larger than that of the Bazarnaya Bay and, with equal length of roads, the density of road network on the first study area out to be one and a half times lower than on the second. The area occupied by recreation facilities on TutaiBay is 1.75 times less than in the BazarnayaBay; the building density is three times lower.
Conclusions. The study showed that the main reason for the development of linear erosion in the Priol'khonie is the combination of natural geological and morphological conditions (thin loose deposits and light-textured soil with a shortened profile) with anthropogenic effects (spontaneous development of the road network) and, as a result, disturbance and destruction of the vegetation cover. In this case, the vegetation cover is a critical factor, since when it is disturbed in conditions of heavy rainfall, erosion processes intensify very quickly, as observations have shown in Tutai Bay.

Introduction. Roads, as large linear engineering structures in mountainous conditions must meet aesthetic requirements. The mountain landscape is created by nature and the road, as an anthropogenic element is wedged into this natural gift, sometimes negatively affecting the surrounding mountain landscape. In order to preserve for future generations the aesthetic properties of picturesqueness and integrity of the mountain landscape, it is necessary to rationally place the road as a linear transport structure, taking into account the best disclosure of the features of the mountain landscape. Purpose of research. Development of landscape design and aesthetic appearance of roads in mountainous conditions. Method of research. The research was based on the works of domestic and foreign scientists, who reveal the problems of landscape design of roads in mountain conditions, analysis and monitoring of construction of mountain roads in the conditions of RSO-Alania and RSO. Conclusion 1. Compliance with aesthetic and design requirements for road design conditions increases safe driving conditions and, consequently, reduces accidents and injuries. 2. The lack of scientific and technical support in the design, construction and operation of the mountain road leads to a weakening of requirements for aesthetics and design, which negatively affects the development of tourism and the economy of the region as a whole.

The purpose of this work to study, to analyze and identify the patterns of long-term fluctuations of maximum water flow at the rivers of Armenia mountain areas and Ukraine in the context of global climate change, perform a comparative analysis. To achieve this goal, the results of actual observations of Armhydromet and Ukrainian HMC, available literature sources were collected, processed and analyzed.
As a result of the analysis of the dates of observation and the values of the maximum runoff, it can be noted that in the territories under consideration the genesis of the annual maximum discharge is different. For the mountain rivers of Armenia, the highest values of raising the level and discharge of water are typical during the spring flood, while for the rivers of the Ukrainian Carpathians its are observed during the passage of summer and winter floods. The impact of climate change on the dynamics of the maximum annual rivers flow is also not clear; on the territory of Armenia, the tendency of decreasing values of the maximum flow prevails,  in Ukraine while negative  and positive trends are observed practically equally. The obtained results open up prospects for further joint research, in particular, on the development of regional methods for calculating the maximum runoff of ungauged rivers.
Findings.• Studying the laws of the formation of maximum river flow in the context of regional and global climate changes is an urgent task of modern geographic science; • Analysis of data on annual runoff maxima showed that the territory of Armenia is most characterized by the dates of passage of the maxima in the spring-summer period, while in the Ukrainian Carpathians, floods can occur throughout the calendar year; • Temporary trends during multi-year maximum water flow rates are not straightforward. Negative trends prevail in the territory of Armenia, negative and positive trends are equally characteristic for the rivers of the Ukrainian Carpathians; • The presence of stable links between annual maximums and river catchment areas shows the possibility of developing a methodology for determining the maximum costs of unexplored rivers in Armenia and the Ukrainian Carpathians.

Mountain and foothill black soils of the Caucasus are rare and even unique soils. They have special properties that distinguish them from plain black soils, have water, temperature and air regimes favorable for crop production and are actively used in agriculture. At the same time, mountain soils and ecosystems are particularly vulnerable. Significant differences in the ecological and genetic characteristics of mountain and foothill black soils from plain analogues necessitate an independent assessment of their resistance to chemical pollution and the development of regional maximum permissible concentrations (rPDK) of pollutants in these soils. Heavy metals are the priority pollutants polluting mountain and foothill soils of the Caucasus (TM) and oil.
HM are the most dangerous environmental pollutants due to their high toxicity and ability to accumulate in the environment. Sources of HM pollution of mountain and piedmont soils of the Caucasus are their deposits, motor vehicle emissions, thermal power plants, waste water, landfills, etc.
Oil and oil products are highly toxic, highly polluted, and highly migratory. Sources of soil pollution by oil and oil products are the development and operation of oil fields, ruptures of oil pipelines, unauthorized tapping into oil pipelines, gas stations, boiler houses, etc.
The aim of the study is to compare the stability of flat and mountain black soils of the Central Caucasus and the Caucasus to contamination with Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb and oil; the establishment of indicative values of the maximum permissible content of HM and oil for the development of regional maximum permissible concentration.
Research methods. Tthe objects of study were the types and subtypes of soils: black soils ordinary (Stavropol territory, Kochubeevskiy area, s. Kochubeevskoe), leached black soils (Karachay-Cherkess Republic, the Habezsky district, the village of Ali-Berdukovskiy), ashed black soils (Karachay-Cherkess Republic, the Habezsky district, the village of Kosh-Khabl). Soil contamination was simulated in laboratory conditions. This study investigated the effects of heavy metals (HM): lead (Pb), chromium (Cr), nickel (Ni), copper (Cu) and oil. HM was applied to the soil in the amount of 1, 10, 100 MPC (100, 1000 and 10,000 mg/kg, respectively), oil – in the amount of 1, 5, 10% of the soil mass. HM was introduced into the soil in oxide form: CrO3, CuO, NiO, PbO. Oil pollution was produced in moist soil. Further, contaminated soil samples were placed in vegetation vessels at a temperature of 20-22°C, with the maintenance of soil moisture by weight at 25%. 
Biological parameters in soils, such as determination of the activity of oxidoreductases (catalase and dehydrogenase), calculation of the total number of bacteria, cellulolytic activity of the abundance of bacteria of the genus Azotobacter, phytotoxic properties of soils and other indicators, were investigated according to conventional methods. In order to combine a large number of studied soil parameters, an integral indicator of the biological state of the soil was developed and implemented.
Research result. Pollution of black soils of the Central Caucasus and the Caucasus with Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb and oil, as a rule, leads to a decrease in the values of all biological indicators: the number of bacteria, the activity of soil enzymes, the deterioration of plant growth and development. The degree of decline in biological indicators of soil condition depends on the genetic properties of the soil, the nature and concentration of the pollutant. Both foothill and mountain black soils of the Caucasus have shown relatively high resistance to pollution by heavy metals and oil. According to the degree of resistance to pollution with Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb and oil black soils of the Central Caucasus and the Caucasu

Analysis of existing theoretical and experimental studies has shown that the mathematical basis of existing geographic information systems is not able to solve the problem of identifying avalanche hazard zones for mountainous areas. 
To solve this problem, in presented research paper it has been developed the mathematical basis for the geographic information system of avalanche zoning in mountainous areas. This basis is formed on a mathematical model of the freshly fallen snow stress-strain state on the slopes of mountainous territories. During the development of the model, the follow-ing assumptions were made: freshly fallen snow is heterogeneous; structural components of snow (ice crystals, snow pellets and hoarfrost) are anisotropic; deformations are elastic; structural components interact with each other through an elastic field; the elastic properties of the structural components and the external stress field are considered known from the experiment; unknown is the stress field in the structural components. Texture components are snowflakes. In some cases, they are adjacent to each other, in others – are at a distance from each other. To develop this model, a systematic approach is used. Freshly fallen snow is divided into two nested subsystems of structural and texture levels. The mathematical model responsible for the structural level of freshly fallen snow is reduced to a system of equations in tensor values. This system includes: the equilibrium equation; Hooke's law in general tensor form, that written relative to local and average values; dependence between deformations and displacements. A complex self-consistent field method is used to solve this system of equations. 
As a result, final expressions for calculating stress tensors and effective elastic modules are obtained. The main difference of the proposed solution method is the simultaneous consideration of the own field and the field induced by other in homogeneities. The mathematical model responsible for the texture level also reduces to a system of equations in tensor form. The solution of this system of equations allows one to obtain final expressions for calculating the effective elastic compliance tensor and the effective elastic modulus tensor. All obtained solutions allow carrying out avalanche zoning in mountain territories on the basis of stressed-strain condition.

Introduction. Widely distributed on the northeastern slope of the Greater Caucasus, the mountain-forest belt is formed under the influence of various factors. At the same time, the territory is constantly exposed to various anthropogenic factors. A large number of settlements, household facilities are located here and their number is growing every day. 
Materials and research methods. For a qualitative study of exodynamic processes in the mountain-forest belt of the north-eastern slope of the Greater Caucasus, the method of decoding space images obtained using a spectrodiometer (MODIS) installed on NASA satellites was used. At the same time, the results obtained in the period of previous studies and, inter alia, by other authors were taken into account. The work also used field research data, assessment methods based on GIS technologies, data from aerological and ground-based meteorological stations in the research area. In order to assess the geoecological situation on the basis of primary information, the choice of representative (characteristic) forests with varying degrees of exposure to anthropogenic impact was of great importance. 
Research results. It was determined that mountain forests undergo transformation under the influence of various factors, and an analysis of these causes plays a large role in optimizing the use of forests. Thus, deforestation leads to drying out of water sources and intensification of soil erosion on the slopes. 
Some areas with sparse forest cover, steep slopes and inconvenient for cutting, shrubby areas are used for grazing. In steep areas where the soil cover is protected only by shrubs, soil with a disturbed structure undergoes erosion with high speed. Within the forest belt, such sites are widespread in the Tahirjal river basins in the Gusar district, and in the Shabran region in the Gilgilchay and Atachay river basins. Deciphering aerial photographs revealed a number of destructive landslides in the research area, especially in the Velvelichay river basin. In this case, a transition from one process to another is observed. Area landslides are characterized mainly by surface deposits. 
Conclusion. We can come to the conclusion that it is advisable to carry out construction work outside the territories of active manifestation of exogenous relief-forming processes. At the same time, it should be noted that the indices of landscape homogeneity of landslide massifs indicate the formation of a complex landscape structure and make it possible to determine the direction of environmental measures.