Principles of landscape-bionomic zoning of the coastal zone and shelf on the example of the northwestern part of the Sea of Japan

The well-known system of units of ecological (bionomic) zoning of the coastal zone and shelf reflects the global features of the ocean nature, where marine ecoregions serve as initial zoning units. Each ecoregion is a regional marine basin (sea) with its composed peculiar natural-climatic conditions and factors: solar radiation, coastal relief (shores and bottom relief), heat exchange of sea surface with atmosphere and advection of water mass, carried by currents and waves. Issues of theory and practice are required to develop units of detailed zoning of marine ecoregions. In practice, principles of landscape-bionomic zoning are based on the use of the units of its three systems: morphostructural composition of coasts, geographical zonality and vertical zonation. The framework of zoning is coastal morphostructures, which are located along the coasts of the marine basin. These determine the delineation of morphostructural areas and regions, which differ in the sign of inherited recent and modern tectonic movements. In turn, internal geodynamics forms coasts of longitudinal and transversal types and soil surfaces (hard, loose). The vertical divisions in the coastal zone are the littoral and sublittoral, which are divided into floors and steps reflecting the biological diversity of bottom biocenoses. The latitudinal geographical zones of the sea surface divide it into boundaries by an isotherm of 5 °C. The proposed system of zoning units allows to display the detailed peculiarities of bionomic conditions and the associated biological diversity, which varies by species within the coastal zone from southwest to northwest of the investigated sea. The paper is devoted to the principles of landscape and bionomic zoning of the coastal area and shelf on the example of the northwestern part of the Sea of Japan.