Рекреационный потенциал речных бассейнов для развития сельского туризма в Актюбинской области

Abstract

The aim of the research was to analyze the climate comfort and assess the recreational potential of river basins for the development of rural tourism in Aktobe Region, Kazakhstan. The ArcGIS 10.5 software was applied to conduct tourist and recreational studies in the target watersheds. Methodologically, the research included two stages. The first one comprised an overview of the available data on local hydrology, terrain (slope degrees), and climatic factors. The efforts allowed creating four thematic maps based on ArcGIS 10.5 SRTM (Shuttle Radar Topographical Mission) imagery of the basins in question. The second stage revealed the tourist and recreational efficiency of river massifs, specifically allowed evaluating the recreational use of rivers as per the proposed methodology. It was found that surface water bodies are not used effectively enough in rural tourism development in the region, i.e. that this type of touristic services has not yet progressed due to numerous issues hindering their spreading, including the underdeveloped social and engineering rural infrastructure, poor quality of road network and transport communications. All these lead to low attractiveness, diminish the effectiveness of rural ecology preservation measures, as well as complicate the organization and creation of proper tourist accommodations. To analyze the possibilities of rural tourism development in specific areas, a special tourist and recreational assessment was carried out within the framework of the research. According to climate index characteristics, the dynamics of the region’s climatic favorability was determined with the main conclusion that it is the poor infrastructure development in Aktobe Region settlements that prevents a full scale expansion of rural tourism in the target river basins