Study On Tourism Environment Carrying Capacity And Sustainable Development Management Mode In The South China Karst World Natural Heritage Sites

The South China Karst comprises the Shilin Karst in Yunnan Province, the Libo Karst in Guizhou Province and the Wulong Karst in Chongqing City was included in the World Heritage List on the 31st World Heritage Conference, 2007. The heritage tourism should be developed for protecting the South China Karst World Natural Heritage Site and improving the local social economy and minority cultures'development. Meanwhile, the tourism environment carrying capacity (TECC) should be researched in order to control the tourism in a limitation as well as protect the eco-environment and minority culture in the heritage Site. And then build a tourism management mode for the sustainable development in the heritage Site.From the point of view of geography and according to the idea of system theory, the thesis was finished based on the cooperation with Guizhou Province, Yunnan Province, Chongqing City and Natural History Museum of Verona, Italy, and discussion with world famous experts as Julia James, Gregory J. Middleton, Dennis Williamson and so on. Abundant information and data have been obtained through fields'survey, measuring and literature collecting. Then, the research was carried out by using geography comparison method and synthetic analysis method, combining the heritage Site protection with the heritage tourism development, combining theory with practice and combining periphery and sample areas.The main contents of the thesis are: the feasibility and necessity of heritage tourism development, as well as the importance of the TECC research in the South China Karst World Natural Heritage Site; build the evaluation index system of the TECC and select the mathematical model for the heritage Site; takes the Libo Heritage Site for example to analysis of the tourism activity current situation and provide the time and space range for the TECC research; research quantitatively the TECC of the Libo Heritage Site; build the tourism management mode for the sustainable development in the Libo Heritage Site, and suitable for the other Site of the South China Karst World Natural Heritage Site.The main conclusions of the thesis are as follows: development of the heritage tourism is important and necessary to the South China Karst World Natural Heritage Site because it will provide the funds insurance and social supervision system for the heritage Site protection, improve the local social economy development, economic structure adjustment and the minority cultural communication; the TECC research is helpful to perfect and enrich the subject system of tourism discipline, protect and inheritance the natural environment and the minority cultural; build the evaluation index system of the TECC including the resources carrying capacity, the karst geology geomorphology carrying capacity, the minority society culture carrying capacity, tourism reception carrying capacity, and 21 indexes total; select the function model of adding various target proportion as the mathematical model for TECC; analysis time and space distribution of the tourism activity to limit the time range (year 2006) and the space range (select the Daxiao Qikong scenic and historic areas as well as the Maolan national nature reserve as a whole); based on the evaluation index system of the TECC, and by the method of spot monitoring, consultation, questionnaire, etc. value assignment weight assignment on every index, calculating that the current TECC of the Libo Heritage Site is 0.487 and is weakly-load; the conclusion shows that the actual tourism environment carrying quantity is less than the theory tourism environment carrying quantity in the Libo Heritage Site, and there is enough potential and space for the development of tourism; construct the tourism management mode for the Libo Heritage Site. The management mode is basically suitable for the Shilin and Wulong Heritage Site considering they located in a same geological-geomorphological region (karst type) and reflect the same features in an identical geographical region (karst region in South China) with the Libo Heritage Site.