Active filaments as the main source of the solar wind plasma in the Earth’s orbit

The works on the relations of active filaments to geomagnetic disturbances, performed in 1953–1974 in the Geophysical Institute of Czechoslovakia [Bednarova-Novakova and Halenka, 1974], and to interplanetary MHD disturbances, performed in 1996–2006 in IZMIRAN by the author of this work with the collaborators, are briefly reviewed. The results of these works form the basis for the conclusion that the coronal-chromospheric plasma related to active filaments is the main source of plasma in the solar wind streams in the Earth’s orbit.