ASSESSING THE ACCESSIBILITY OF RELIEF FOR TOURISM ACTIVITIES. CASE STUDY - COZIA MASSIF (SOUTHERN CARPATHIANS, ROMANIA)

Abstract

Relief, through altitude, specific landforms and processes, through the morphology of valleys and interfluves, influences the practice of different types of tourism in a given area. It can be considered a factor of favorability or restrictiveness for the development of tourist activities. Restriction is mainly given by the degree of accessibility of the landforms through its morphometric and morphographic parameters. In this context, this study aims to assessing the accessibility of landforms by analyzing a series of factors (declivity, land cover, road network), determining the accessibility by sectors of the tourist routes, highlighting the parameters with the greatest importance in calculating accessibility, determining the degree of difficulty of tourist trails, as well as the identification of areas where low accessibility generates specific forms of tourism (alpinism and climbing). The study area is represented by Cozia Massif, located in the South of the Southern Carpathians and enrolled almost entirely in the area of Cozia National Park. The accessibility of the massif was determined by the analysis of three factors (declivity, land cover and transport infrastructure) which constituted the main input data of the applied model. Intersection of parameters has led to the establishment of accessibility ranges for both the entire mountainous area and, in particular, for the tourist routes. The results showed that in a proportion of 43.41%, the massif has average accessibility, which offers the possibility of developing various types of mountain tourism. The transport routes inside the massif amount to about 162 km, of which 56 km are marked tourist trails. They mostly have high and medium accessibility (31.38% and 41.77% respectively).

Keywords

• relief
• tourism
• accessibility
• tourist route
• Cozia Massif
• Southern Carpathians
• Romania