Abstract
Over the last decades, valuable natural areas considered as zones of silence and rest have been increasingly struggling with the problem of mass tourism. In this study, an investigation of the effect of visitors on the properties of vegetation of calcareous grasslands in the context of width and distances from tourist trails is performed. The study was conducted in seven localities in Cracow (southern Poland) involving calcareous grasslands impacted by tourist trails. The results show that the lower height of plants, the greater number of species and the greater percentage of plant cover damaged by trampling in plots located close to the edge of tourist trails, as well as lower total plant cover and greater mean cover-abundance degree per species along narrow pathways. The dominance of meadow and grassland species, as well as the prevalence of native species, suggests that the composition of the examined vegetation has not been drastically changed. In the majority of the study plots, the dominance of hemicryptophytes and chamaephytes, inconsiderable share of phanerophytes and therophytes, as well as the low share of geophytes, were observed. The infrequent occurrence of species presenting Bidens dispersal type along narrow pathways, as well as in plots located close to the edge of tourist trails, suggests low external transport of epizoochorous seeds by passing people, while the prevalence of species presenting Cornus type in plots located away from the edge of tourist trails might be the effect of dung deposition by animals.
Highlights
The phenomenon of overtourism, which is understood as the opposite of sustainable tourism, has been known and described so far mainly in the urban areas (e.g., [1,2,3,4])
We focused on the impact of width of tourist pathways and distance from pathways on (i) plant cover features i.e., height of the tallest plant shoot, species abundance, damaged plant cover percentage by trampling, total plant cover percentage, cover-abundance degree of particular species, and (ii) occurrence of species presenting different habitat affiliations, dispersal modes, life forms and origin
The mean height of the tallest plant ranged from 66.2 cm to 123.7 cm (Figure A1) and it was similar in the plots situated along the narrow and wide pathways (F = 0.08, p = 0.77), at the same time it was significantly greater in the plots FU than in the plots CL (F = 31.64, p < 0.001)
Summary
The phenomenon of overtourism, which is understood as the opposite of sustainable tourism, has been known and described so far mainly in the urban areas (e.g., [1,2,3,4]). The negative consequences of the excessive tourist traffic represented, among others, by excessive water intake and sewage production, waste generation, noise, increased probability of fire initiation, synanthropisation of flora and fauna, scaring away of animals, as well as changes in the structure of biocoenoses were repeatedly noted in protected areas. Another consequence of excessive tourist traffic is trampling, which leads to the creation of informal trails. The trampling might improve the dissemination of diaspores over long distances [20,21], the dispersal of non-native taxa [22]
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