USING GPS TRECKS FOR ESTIMATION THE RECREATIONAL LOADS ON NATURAL PROTECTED AREAS

Abstract

The development of tourism and recreation in specially protected natural areas raises the problem of preserving natural landscapes, their biodiversity and unique properties. For this purpose, functional zoning of protected areas is carried out, tourist routes that combine the interests of tourists are laid and the stability of ecosystems are regulated. To assess the level of acceptable changes in the landscape, it is necessary to compare them with the number of tourists. The most effective method is a direct accounting of recreants, but it is labor-intensive and expensive. In this regard, indirect methods of accounting for recreational load have been widely developed: measuring the width and density of the tourist trails, counting the number of trampled markers, and using open civil (social) databases. The article considers the results of using GPS tracks to assess the recreational load of protected areas on the Crimean Peninsula. We analyzed 170 tracks of Hiking routes obtained from the GPSies service for the “Baydarsky” and “Cape Aya” reserves. According to the level of recreational load, tourist trails are ranked into 4 categories: high, medium, low and very low. High recreational load corresponds to more than 10 GPS tracks, medium – from 5 to 9, low – from 1 to 5. At a very low recreational load, GPS tracks are usually not available. The frequency of use of tourist routes on model reserves of the Crimea, estimated by the density of GPS tracks, indicates the localization of loads on some of the most popular trails. Among the selected 19 trails, 13 of them are characterized by a high level of recreational load and 6 – medium. Thus, data on the distribution and density of GPS tracks in the protected areas of the Crimean Peninsula showed their prospects for assessing the recreational load