A Research On The Environmental Impacts Of Tourism Industry In Three Gorges Reservoir Area

Since the 1960's, the impacts of tourism industry on the environment has long been a topic for heated debate in the international academic circle. Scholars researched the impacts of tourism industry on different environmental systems (such as physical environment, social environment, etc.) or factors in environmental system in different areas and procured fruitful achievement. But now, some researchers studied synthetically the tourism impacts on physical environment, social environment and local residents' psychological responses on the of tourism impacts in same area, probed into the interactions between different environmental systems under tourism impacts and established an applicable integrated evaluation system (IES) of the tourism impacts on the environment. Therefore, this paper focusse on the research of impacts of tourism industry on physical, economic and socio-cultural environment in the Three Gorges Reservoir Area, the research of residents' psychological responses on the tourism impacts, and the establishment of IES and control system of tourism impacts by adapting experimentation, field-survey, comparative research and model design, etc..(1)There are evident facts that water, soil, vegetations and their environment for existent are influenced negatively by the tourists' activities in Three Gorges Reservoir Area. (1)The development of tourism industry results in the increase of water need, of water supply, of pollutants by tourism industry, which has aggravated the burthen of sewage treatment facilities and exacerbation of water quality in the Three Gorges Reservoir Area. In this area, the average use of water 290 liters daily per tourist is 1.23 times as much as townsmen, the average use of water daily per overnight tourist is from 1.55 to 12.27 times as much as townsmen. The increasing need of water from tourism industry should beget the shortage of water supply of tourism cities or towns, especially mountainous tourism zones that lack due supply of water. Sewage of 260 liters daily per tourist is 20 percent more than townsmen, and rubbish of 900 grams daily per tourist is 80 percent more than townsmen, their increase speed is faster than that of townsmen. Much sewage by tourists or tourist ships that isn't gathered and treated, which is dumped into rivers, is a most dangerous pollutant to the rivers in the Three Gorges Reservoir Area. (2)Soil physical and chemic elements...