Abstract
The rich and diverse Natural Heritage of Bulgaria is a prerequisite for the development of nature- based tourism (NBT) of a new type. The research is carried out by the implementation of the ecosystem approach. The results include an assessment of the natural heritage capacity to provide goods and services for the development of NBT in the Tourist Regions (TR) of Bulgaria. The results show the spatial distribution of the natural heritage sites in all nine TR in Bulgaria and their natural capacity for development of different types of NBT. There are only 37 municipalities out of 265 with not a one Natural Heritage (NH) site, and all the rest have natural resources to develop NBT. The results can be of use for the achievement of the goals for sustainable tourism by assessment of the capacity to provide recreation ecosystem services (RES).
Highlights
The role of natural heritage for the development of recreation and tourism has been studied in several publications (Popova 1993, Tengberg et al 2012, Gordon 2018, Osipova et al 2014, Georgiev 2006, Toncheva 2014, Vasileva 2018, Ihtimanski et al 2019, Nikolova et al (2018, 2020, 2021, 2021a), Nedkov et al (2014, 2018, 2021, 2021a), Havinga et al 2020, Zhiyanski et al 2021, Dodev et al 2021)
This paper aims to assess the potential of the cultural ecosystem services provided by the National Natural Heritage (NH) for development of nature-based tourism in Bulgarian Tourist Regions (TR)
The first one is to calculate the number of protected areas (PA) in each TR, and the second one is to calculate the percentage of the NH area from each TR
Summary
The role of natural heritage for the development of recreation and tourism has been studied in several publications (Popova 1993, Tengberg et al 2012, Gordon 2018, Osipova et al 2014, Georgiev 2006, Toncheva 2014, Vasileva 2018, Ihtimanski et al 2019, Nikolova et al (2018, 2020, 2021, 2021a), Nedkov et al (2014, 2018, 2021, 2021a), Havinga et al 2020, Zhiyanski et al 2021, Dodev et al 2021) These studies illustrate well the link between NH and ecosystem services for recreation, health, education, sports, spiritual practices, etc. Given the development of sustainable tourism, the assessment of the potential of these territorial units to develop one or another type of tourism should be consistent with the capacity of ecosystems to provide relevant ecosystem services for recreation and tourism, which we tentatively call recreational ecosystem services
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