Spatial socio-economic and ekistical differentiation of the Russian regions will never lose its relevance due to their vast territories, significant differences in settlement systems, and socioeconomic activities of their entities. The differences are clearly manifested in the border areas. A feature of the Belgorod, Voronezh, Kursk regions is their border position with the Ukraine, which has left noticeable imprints on the population of border areas and a number of socio-economic indicators. Therefore, the main goal of this paper is to establish and assess the socio-economic and ekistical spatial differentiation of the border areas of the Central Black Earth Region in the conditions of attractiveness of regional metropolises. To achieve the stated goal it is needed to identify and analyse the impact of regional metropolises on the polarization of socio-economic regional development as well as to determine trends in the development of socio-economic systems of the Central Black Earth Region. The assigned set tasks have been achieved with the use of methods of spatial-temporal, system, and statistical analysis as well as geoformation mapping (ArcGIS) and the results of expeditions in 2018-2020. The study has established that the high attractiveness of regional metropolises predetermined spatial polarization in the socio-economic development of regions and regional settlement systems of the territories bordering Ukraine in the Central Black Earth Region and that both the border areas themselves, except for the Belgorod one, and most territories of the Central Black Earth regions are located in the area of active depopulation and low population density. It is concluded that the laws of urbanization processes development and the coronavirus pandemic will strengthen settlement deconcentration, the growth of classical and structural suburbanization.

Application of integrated approach to geoplanning of rural territories on the basis of the concept of basin environmental management and technological capabilities of geoinformation design and remote sensing is shown. The sequence of scientific and technological maintenance of transition to the basin organization of the territory and an assessment of results of geoplanning in one of the Russian regions is presented. On the basis of use of experience of application of the concept of basin environmental management in planning of rural territories the approachability of overcoming of the most critical disproportions in the developed structure of land fund has been studied.

The climate of the 1950s-1990s in the center of the Russian Plain was characterized by the alternation of cool-wet and warm-dry periods, which is confirmed by hydrothermal coefficients. The studies in the south of the forest-steppe of the Central Russian Upland (Belgorod oblast) based on the geoinformation analysis of different-time soil maps have revealed regular changes in the boundaries of soil areas of automorphic chernozems (Chernozems) related to these intra-century climatic cycles. The transformed chernozems area was 125790 ha (38.5%). In general, 61.5% (328885 ha) of soil areas in the studied region remained unchanged. The response of the soil cover was indicated by behavior of carbonates and leaching. It has been revealed that with increase of hydrothermal coefficient by more than 0.2, the effervescence line in chernozems is oscillating, which results in a change in the taxonomic position of soils at the subtype level.