THE LATEST APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF THE GEOECOLOGICAL HISTORY OF RUSSIA OF THE XVI - XVIII CENTURIES

The article considers geoecological history as a new scientific direction in Russian science, which began to take shape in the 1990s. The methods of geoecological history are sufficiently convincingly substantiated and practically applied in the article. Quite rightly, the peasant economy is regarded as an eco-social organism. Considering the possibilities of primary sources, the author uses a microhistoric approach. Such an approach is simply necessary to study a large area with a noticeable variety of natural resources, the habitat of individual settlements and even courtyards. The article characterizes the soil cover, analyzes soil changes during the Middle Ages and early Modern times using field studies of the first Russian soil scientists of the second half of the XIX - early XX centuries. These sources are considered in historical retrospect, which is quite appropriate for studying the slow evolution of soils, even those subjected to anthropogenic influence