Geoecological research in the territory of the northern slope of the Great Caucasus

The paper considers the results of field geoecological studies in the Greater Caucasus by employees of the Center for Geographical Research of KBSC RAS, dedicated to assessing the impact of hazardous natural processes (avalanches, mudflows, landslides, taluses, floods, etc.) on mountain geosystems for the period from 2015 to 2020 years. The methodology for assessing the exposure of the territory to hazardous processes, developed and tested at the Center in the course of field monitoring is applied. Analysis of the state of the research problem, taking into account the study and development (by types of land use), as well as climatic factors of the hazardous processes formation is presented both for the physical and geographical parts of the Greater Caucasus Northern slope (Western, Central and Eastern Caucasus) and individual administrative entities (territories and republics) and for certain types of hazardous processes. Based on the results of the assessment, it was revealed that the territory is extremely unevenly studied both in terms of area and types of hazardous processes. The same patterns were revealed for the types of land use. The obtained numerical estimates of the territory's exposure to hazardous processes are preliminary and require further refinement. For some selected geosystems with a high degree of exposure, detailed integral assessments of the actual natural hazard were obtained.