Course description

«Research Methods in Earth Sciences» is a normative discipline for students majoring in the speciality of «Soil Science and Expert Assessment of Lands», an educational program for bachelor training. It is taught in the 6th term in the amount of 3.5 credits (according to the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System, ECTS). This is a basic theoretical and methodological course which reveals the fundamental principles of research methods in the field of soil science and land assessment. Having fulfilled the course requirements, students will be able to critically consider the basic methods of soil science and land assessment: expeditionary, comparative geographical, comparative analytical, statistical and analytical, functional analytical, stochastic, statistical and cartometric, a modeling method, a cartographic method, a method of assessment, historical, qualitatively genetic, methods of logical analysis, forecasting, systematization, and accumulation of soil information, etc.

Students evaluate the frames of application of each of these methods in practical classes. Students learn the basic assessment indicators as well as assessment and cartographic materials in the field of Earth sciences. They also analyze the concept of expert land assessment as an evaluative category of soil properties and soil formation regimes. Much attention is paid to the inadequacy of evaluation scale development concerning separate soil properties and integrated indicators of land mass characteristics. While applying the aforementioned methods of research, we consider their effectiveness for understanding the object of studying or its relationship within the system of different objects that are being studied by one of the methods in question.