Capitalizing of the geotourism potential and its impact on relief. Case study: Cozia Massif, Romania

Abstract

In the mountain area, the relief is the element of the geographical environment with the highest degree of tourist attractiveness, due to the variety and spectacularity of its forms and processes. The geotourism potential of the Cozia Massif is due to the evolution of the relief, conditioned by lithology, tectonics and climate. The cumulative action of these factors has led to the development of distinct landforms with a high favorability for geotourism activity: sharp edges and picks, impressive slopes, arcades, towers. In order to ensure the access of the tourists to the main areas of interest, a network of marked and unmarked tourist routes and trails has been identified, along with the forest roads. The present study has as main objective the analysis of the geotourism potential and infrastructure as well as highlighting the impact of tourism activities on the present-day morphodynamics. In this respect, the geotourism map of the Cozia Massif was drawn-up, representative profiles were made for each touristic route in order to characterize them in detail and to quantify the quantity of eroded material within the tourist routes, the hydric erosion being the main geomorphologic process intensified by the tourism activity. The results of the study showed that the Cozia Massif has a high geotourism potential and the accessibility to the main geomorphositess is appropriate, being represented by a network of roads and paths with a total length of 162 km. The tourist activities involve the increase of the anthropic pressure on the environment and the land degradation by increasing the erosion. The erosion processes are accelerated on the tourist trails along the slope, in the case of forest roads and exploitation roads affected in particular by logging, with a value of 41.15 t/ha/year.