THE CONCEPT OF UKRAINE NATIONAL ATLAS AND ITS REALIZATION

L.G.Rudenko, A.I.Bochkovskaja, T.I.Kozachenko, V.P.Razov

Ukraine NAS, Institute of geography

geo-ins@kiev.ldc.net

The national atlas of Ukraine (NAU) is conceived and developed as a fundamental complex cartographical product called to give complete representation about the nature, the population, economy and an ecological condition of our country nature, history, culture components.

At the Institute of Geography, (NAS of Ukraine), concept of NAU lighting experience in creation of national atlases is developed: it includes the basic conceptual rules of NAU development (a general characteristic; the notional apparatus of atlas mapmaking; the purposes and problems of NAU creation; spheres of its use; types and aspects of maps, scales; scientific principles and approaches to development; levels of mapmaking); scientific and organizational maintenance of development; production methods; structure and maintenance of NAU.

Scientific principles and approaches to the Atlas development

The atlas is created as a fundamental cartographical product of multipurpose use in which results of the newest fundamental scientific researches in many branches of knowledge (geography, history, geology, geophysics, botany, economy, other sciences) are generalized. It has allowed to create uniform informational baseline for various directions of its use.

The important basic rules of NAU development are an integrated approach in representation of investigated subject ( the state territory which is supplemented with integrativeness (synthesis)), a historical method and dynamics (development of maps of evolution, changes, dynamics of the natural and social and economic phenomena and processes), representativity of information; systematization of material representations in the cartographic form, NAU section balance concerning quantity of maps, scale range, maps coordination on content; a uniform level observance of cartographic generalization.

The basic scientific approaches to cartographical representation of an investigated subject are as follows: inventory, regional, estimated, recommended and prognostic resources. In 1998-2000 the pilot design development of this atlas on CD-ROM (in Ukrainian language and English languages) was carried out.

Implementation of NAU Concept is described. Structure and contents of the Ukraine National Atlas is represented. The atlas is in paper (with the additional volume, containing Russian and English texts and legends) and in electronic format.