Historical analysis of agricultural development and use of the territory of Mordovia (from the Neolithic to the present day)

Introduction. From an environmental point of view, the article considers the appearance of agriculture and its development on the territory of Mordovia. Materials and Methods. The authors, focusing on a historical analysis of the processes of agricultural development and use of landscapes on the territory of Mordovia, came to the conclusion that lack of knowledge how to transform nature in the development process can lead to serious economic and environmental miscalculations, negatively affects the most important natural properties of socio-ecological systems, and above all, their productivity. A graphic model of the equilibrium state of the ecosystems of the natural-territorial complex of Mordovia was developed for the purpose of detailed consideration of the issue by N. F. Reimers' method. Results and Discussion. Agricultural activities on the territory of the Republic of Mordovia, as well as in other regions of the Finno-Ugric peoples' residence, have become the main cause of the disturbance of the ecological balance, its impact on soil, atmosphere, water, energy and biotic components of natural systems. It caused deep and large-scale processes of degradation of the natural environment. The destruction of natural vegetation, primarily woody vegetation, has had a great impact on the water balance: due to deforestation and plowing of land, erosion processes have sharply increased and droughts have become more frequent. The authors prove the predominant role of forest landscapes in the restoration and preservation of the region's ethnoecosystem. Conclusion. The historical analysis made it possible to conclude that the history of agricultural development of the territory of Mordovia, as well as other Finno-Ugric regions of Russia, can be called the history of deforestation. All this raises with new force questions about the return to the Finno-Ugric regions of their natural forests and the intensification of scientific research in the field of optimal forest cover.