NATURAL AND CULTURAL HERITAGE OF UKRAINE: EXPERIENCE OF THEMATIC STUDY AND ATLAS ELECTRONIC MAPPING

The article considers the main methodological approaches to the thematic study of natural and cultural heritage (NCH) and the results of their implementation in the electronic atlas "Population of Ukraine and its natural and cultural heritage". The structure and content of the two thematic blocks of the Atlas in the composition of 37 maps is built in such a way as to cover all the variety of definitions that characterize the spheres of nature and culture heritage in Ukraine. Based on the developed methodological approaches, for the first time in Ukraine, cultural and landscape zoning of the country's territory at the macro level was performed, in the taxonomic system of which 14 cultural and landscape regions and 52 cultural and landscape macroregions were identified. For the purposes of mapping natural heritage, a no official definition of this term has been developed, the typology of objects has been determined, a database of existing and promising objects and territories with their coordinate reference has been formed, and several relevant maps have been created. The problem of a huge number of potential objects of cultural heritage mapping (over 100 thousand) in the process of forming the data base was solved by not considering necropolis historical monuments, most commemorative plaques, and some minor buildings in the complexes of monuments and by reflection, mainly monuments of national (partially, local) significance. The Atlas has significantly expanded the composition of functional categories of cultural heritage by integrating a wide range of cultural and natural, tangible and intangible, movable and immovable heritage by separate research areas. The result of this work are maps of ethnocultural, religious, scientific, and technical heritage. These are the first in Ukraine specialized maps of similar topics and scope, which constitute the scientific novelty of the Atlas, allow to significantly expand the subject field of research NCH, and can contribute to the introduction into scientific practice of new categories of heritage. For the first time in Ukraine, based on collected, systematized, thorough and comprehensive information, a holistic picture of the country's NCH is shown.