The ecological situation in the world is extremely complex, the burden on the environment is increasing. Pollution and depletion of land resources continue to threaten public health, environmental safety and economic stability of countries. The recreational impact on natural objects is also significant.

A recreational load is a kind of anthropogenic impact, which leads to negative changes in geosystems during recreational activities, namely trampling on vegetation, compaction of soil, destruction of young growth, damage to trees, fire breaking-out and contamination. The recreational loading of the territories is caused by the exceeding limits for the number of tourists, who can be collocated in the same territory, whose adaptation to recreational needs leads to a negative impact on the natural environment.

Recreational regionalism and zoning are productive methods of regulating recreational loads, under which recreational development is regulated in accordance with the accepted regime of individual regions and zones. Each region or zone has the adopted level of recreational use, which depends on its recreational value, ecosystem stability and a number of non-natural factors (Cordell, 2008, p. 10).

The norms of recreational load depend mainly on natural landscapes and year season. Coastal natural systems have the greatest resistance to the impact of recreational load and lowland ones have the smallest resistance. For different natural systems, recreational load in winter varies from 20% for coastal areas to 80% for mountainous ones in relation to summer period due to the specific character of recreational activities in different seasons. Intensive recreational load leads to digression. Recreational digression is a destruction of the natural environment caused by the impact of people’s activity. The degree of environmental digression depends directly on recreational load and resistance of natural systems to it (Hunter, 2006, p. 51).

The degree of recreational digression depends on recreational pressure and resistance of natural systems. In turn, resistance of natural systems to recreational pressure depends on many factors, namely: soil cover, degree of erosion, steepness of slopes, age of plantings, humidity, location and others.

Rivers and lakes cannot entirely satisfy the demand for water-based recreation, since many of them, especially small, are heavily polluted and shallow. Under the circumstances, reservoirs play an essential role in the development of recreation, as they are important water recreation resources and the only ones in some places (Sisneros-Kidd, 2019, p. 4).

The fishery potential of water bodies substantially affects the scope of their recreational use, since amateur fishing is one of the most popular types of water recreation. Therefore, it is important that the hydrological and hydrochemical regimes of water bodies are optimal for the recovery of fish resources.

Direct impact is the direct pollution of water caused by contamination with the microbial flora of human body, oil leakage and exhaust emissions from marine diesel engines, fish feeding and accumulation of waste materials on the ice. Side effect implies water quality deterioration associated with quantitative and qualitative changes of surface and subsurface drainage from the territories of recreational water use.

In order to appropriately assess the situations that have arisen in the areas of mass recreational water use as well as develop and substantiate optimization solutions, it is necessary to consider water recreation as an ambiguous concept. The diversity of water recreation and sports requires a differentiated approach to solving problems of recreational water use for different types of water bodies.

References

1. Cordell, H.K., Betz, C.J. & Green, G.T. (2008). Nature-based outdoor recreation trends and wilderness. Int. J. Wilderness, 14, 7-13.
2. Hunter, C., & Shaw, J. (2007). The ecological footprint as a key indicator of sustainable tourism. Tour. Manag. 28, 46-57.
3. Sisneros-Kidd, A.M.S., Monz, C., Hausner, V., Schmidt, J. & Clark, D. (2019). Nature-based tourism, resource dependence, and resilience of Arctic communities. Framing complex issues in a changing environment. J. Sustain. Tour, 27, 1-8.