This basic educational movie is entitled “The Geographical Envelope”. This term in the Russian geographical science is similar to Richard Hartshorne’s “Earth’s envelope” concept of the atmosphere, the earth’s crust and the oceans, together with the living world. The film defines the concepts of lithosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere, and introduces the water, biological and the solid matter cycles. Then it speaks about the concept of the regional environments and enumerates some of the natural properties and processes these environments are subjected to. The later two thirds of the movie show different local environments – like the savannah, mountainous environments or river basins, and provides a general biogeographical description of them and mention where those are usually located. The last minutes of the movie focus on the human use of land for agriculture. The movie was produced by Studiya LenNauchFilm aka the Leningrad Science Film Studio in the 1970s.

0:20-1:03 This was how the Earth looked 4,5 billion years ago – no blue skies, no free water, no greenery, only its stony carapace – the lithosphere.

1:03 However due to emission of various gasses from the depths of Earth an atmosphere has formed.

1:34-1:47 Water vapor was also expelled from the depth of Earth, progressively this vapor condensed and became the Earth’s hydrosphere

1:48 It’s hard to imagine, but once it rained for the first time ever on Earth

2:00-2:54 Millions of years later, there appeared first living creatures.

2:54 As a result of the activity of all living beings, a biosphere developed – it both supports life and needs life to be able to exist.

2:54-3:10 The Lithosphere, the atmosphere, the hydrosphere and the biosphere are interconnected by a complex set of processes.

3:10-4:37 We’re very familiar with one of such processes – the water cycle. From its inception on this planet, it has always continued and continuing today.

3:49 A diagram, showing rock acting as a bottom of the channel for the rainwater flowing through the soil towards a stream

3:53 The mechanism by which a natural spring appears

4:38-5:53 There is a continuous exchange cycle of the solid matter as well – by erosion, displacement, sedimentation and the Earth’s crust movement

5:54-7:00 There are cycles in the biosphere as well – plants absorb inorganic matter, thrive and become feed for animals.

7:00-7:26 All those cycles are interconnected, and thus the lithosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere could be considered a single system, called the geographical envelope.

7:27 Everywhere there are unique local geographical regional conditions – orography, hydrography, flora and fauna.

8:34-10 :33 Look at the circumpolar ice deserts, as an example of such regions. The coldest months is extremely cold, during the hottest month the temperatures barely rise above 0. There is permafrost and few plants and animals.

10:58-11:48 Thousands of kilometers to the south there are other deserts – deserts and arid environments are present on all continents, and the largest ones are situated in Asia and Africa.

11:49-13:40 Savannah environmental regiot. There are just 2 seasons there – the dry season and the wet season.

13 :41-14:15 Why are there such differences between environmental regions – because the sunlight is hitting the earth surface at unequal angles at different latitudes.

14:16- 15:50 In the mountains the environment also changes with altitudes. It can go from a subtropical jungle at the bottom all the way through forests, steppes to a snow and ice desert of the glaciers on the summit.

15:51-18:14 Every environmental region has its own particular soil type, and frequently its own plant and animal life.

18:14-19:17 There are different environments on the same flow basin as well.

19:18 Why are those environments different if they lie so close together ? It’s because of the different evaporation and heating regimes.

19:30-20:49 The human use of the flow basins for agriculture also varies by the location in the basin. The river sides and high-flow locations are strengthened by planting trees to stop erosion.

20:50-21:03 Thus science is helping humans to become real diligent masters and owners of the Earth.

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