If you consider a map of the area or topographic plans, you can often find such a geographical term as a tract. What is meant by this name? A person far from cartography may well get confused. After all, sometimes a hill is called a natural boundary, then, on the contrary, a hollow or ravine, a swamp, a forest, a meadow, a lake ... In this article we will try to understand such a vague term. This information will be especially useful for travelers in the mountains, where the tracts were distributed on both sides of the ranges.
Etymology
What is a natural boundary, the science of landscape science is studying. But this term was not invented by scientists. He is more ancient. And you correctly thought that in terms of sounding the term "natural boundary" is close to the word "lesson". But the meaning of the latter was different before. Now the lesson is a training session, and in the old days the word denoted a contract, something jointly agreed. A term has come from the verb "limit". In Latin, the term definitus corresponds to it. That is, in antiquity, a lesson is the result of an agreed contract, a deal. This word is preserved in the Polish language, in it urok is still something jointly agreed upon. The original meaning of the word gradually disappeared from the Russian language. The lesson as an established place and time of collection turned into a training session for children or adults. But in the term "natural boundary" the old sense is preserved. What can be agreements on geographical features?
The meaning of the word "tract" in the people
While there was no humanity, forests, mountains, lakes and rivers were not named at all. Names to geographical objects began to give people. But then a difficulty arose. Often it happens that a hill rises on a plain, in a thicket of a forest there is a naturally devoid of trees glade, on a flat meadow a swamp or lake blocks your path. What are the names of such objects that differ from the surrounding landscape? And then people agree on a name. It is only for tourists that there are the Carpathian mountains with the main ranges, and for the local people, all the environs of their village are dotted with tracts. This is a meadow on which cattle have long been grazed, and a mountain slope overgrown with larches, although there is only pine around, and a hollow near the slope, and a stream serving as the natural border of communal lands and the neighboring village. And stories about every natural boundary of the local people are stored. A lawsuit was going on for that piece of land, lovers were found in that tract, and there was once a farm in another.
Value in landscape science
Scientists took the term from the folk language, but gave it a slightly different definition. What is a natural boundary in scientific understanding? This term occupies an intermediate position between the landscape and facies. It denotes the morphological part of the area, due to the general orientation of geographical processes on a common substrate. It sounds incomprehensible, but try to explain it in a simpler language. A completely different microclimate is formed on the southern slope of the mountain than on the northern. More thermophilic plants grow there, and therefore the soils there are also formed different. Two parts of one mountain are different from each other. We can say that this is a natural boundary. The situation is exactly the same with a natural clearing in the middle of a thicket or a forest that has grown on a field. There is a different microclimate, soil, flora and even fauna. For example, the animal world of a swamp differs from a meadow or forest ecosystem. A tract is a formation from one to several tens of kilometers in size. It is divided into facies - smaller areas in which full uniformity of physical and geographical indicators is observed. For example, it can be a shallow sandy shore of the lake, the edge of a beech forest, a hollow in a meadow, the northern slope of a ravine.
Importance in Soviet Cartography
So, what is a natural boundary, we have already figured out. This is a geographical object that clearly stands out from the surrounding landscape, to which the local people gave some name. The Soviet cartographers had a certain logic when they decided to call natural tracts not only natural swamps, streams, meadows and forests, but also artificial formations - settlements. After all, small villages and farms also clearly stand out from the surrounding area. Therefore, on old maps you can see the designation "tract" in front of the names of small settlements. Although this is actually just a few houses and streets.
What is an old tract
The surface of the earth is slowly, almost imperceptibly, but changing. Mountains are smoothed, troughs are filled. Under the influence of a changing climate, steppes are formed instead of forests. Water bodies are subject to particularly rapid changes. Rivers quite often change their channels. Lakes become shallow, turn into swamps. The latter also dry out and meadows form in their place. But the memory of the local population is tenacious, and for a long time the names “forest”, “lake”, “stream” or “swamp” are preserved in place names, when these objects have already disappeared. In Russia, the term "old tract" is often understood as abandoned villages and other small settlements. Some of them carry traces of buildings, others are lowered to the ground or resting at the bottom of reservoirs.