USING OF GIS FOR ESTIMATION OF THE RECREATIONAL LOADS ON NATURAL PROTECTED AREAS

Abstract

Conservation of a biodiversity, valuable natural complexes, heritage of nature is the purpose of creation of protected areas. At the same time the tasks and the functions of protected areas are transforming during last decades, their socio-economic part is strengthening. The areas occupied with the protected areas are not removed from economic activity completely and on the contrary are involved ever more in economy of regions. Among the types of nature management permitted on the protected areas, tourism is the most popular. However, considerable increase in the number of visitors on the protected areas leads to negative consequences: vegetation soil cover damaging, structure and composition of vegetation and water-physical properties of soil changing that results recreational digression of landscapes in general. Such direction of development of tourism on the protected areas is contradicting implementation of the key objective of natural complexes conservation, and the conflicts between conservation and recreational management appear. The introduction of measures on tourist flow and recreation workload management might reduce the impact of recreation on the protected areas. Geoinformation systems (GIS) can be an analytical tool and the basis for decision-making management in regulation of development of tourist infrastructure and tourist activity on the protected areas.

Keywords

• protected natural areas
• recreational loads
• tourism
• GIS
• coastal zone