Different scientific directions in ecological researches are used for an estimation and indication of a state of environment. What of directions is the most demanded? This question is difficult to answer unequivocally. Certainly, researchers of concrete scientific field will defend their chosen scientific topic of research as the most important. At the same time, attention to the study of the environment has increased not only among scientists but also among the public in recent decades. The solution to many environmental goals are now closely linked to the economic, cultural and social issues. Therefore it is important to know that disturbs people who want to live in harmony (their majority) with surrounding environment.
What scientific directions in environment researches are the most demanded and answer inquiries of today? To obtain an indirect answer to the task, we used inquiries of Internet users in search engines Google and Yandex as an “expert answers”. Certainly, such estimation has a number of shortcomings. Nevertheless, such estimation allows to receive rough representation about tendencies and about relative priorities of users of a network of the Internet in a question of ecological studies.
Inquiries are counted up on 12 points of fundamental and up on 5 points of applied directions in ecological researches:
| Basic research
1.Taxonomy 2.Biodiversity 3.Zoogeography 4.Alien species 5 Climate change as impact factor 6. Pollution of Environment (oil spills, heavy metals) 7.Eutrophication 8.Production and trophic structure 9.Structure of communities 10.Spatial distribution 11.Temporal distribution 12.Habitat classification |
Applied research
1.Environmental Quality Standards 2.Environmental protection 3.Environmental impact assessment 4.Ecological risk assessment 5.Environmental damage |
The graphs of monthly “expert queries” are presented in figures 1 and 2.
Figure 1. The number of requests in English in the search engines Google and Yandex to 12 fundamental ecological directions, Juli 2017.
Figure 2. The number of requests in English in the search engines Google and Yandex to 5 applied ecological directions, Juli 2017.
Inquiries on the Internet are characterized by temporal variability in 2016-2017, which is reflected in Figure 3.
Figure 3. The variability of monthly queries (2016-2017) in English in the search engines Google and Yandex at the top-five directions of ecological studies.