SUMMARY

The first CD-ROM on the "Land Resources of Russia" has been developed. It contains two major blocks of information: baseline data on major land characteristics of the country and applications of the baseline data. All information is georeferenced and relevant to the geographical scale from which it was produced (1:1 to 1:5 million). Baseline data is provided for a variety of topics under the headings of Socio-economy and Natural Conditions, including: climate, hydrology, permafrost, relief, lithology, vegetation, soils, transport network, population, and administrative units. Each topic is illustrated with explanatory text, maps for viewing and data for downloading. Applications termed Land Endowment provide examples of data analysis based on GIS techniques. These examples are selected for subjects of different complexity and also have an educational meaning for users having limited capacity in GIS-based analysis.

Background
Russia is rich in data on land characteristics. However, this information is hardly available due to dispersion among various disciplines and sources, temporal and spatial inconsistency, traditional paper formats, etc. One problem faced by the international scientific community is that of the language constraints and incomplete translation of basic concepts developed by national scientists. The baseline data has been developed to overcome these hurdles. It provides data together with a comprehensive explanatory description in english.

Products
The baseline data and applications complete with explanatory text on the land resources of Russia is the main product of the CD-ROM. It comprises a unique, spatially referenced dataset to meet the requirements of national institutions and the international community specifically dealing with land and environmental resource analysis particularly focused on modern modeling applications.