Recreation capacity as an indicator of environmental and tourist potential of protected lakes of the Republic of Tatarstan

The growing need of population in having a safe rest of good quality not far from where they live causes demand of space and increasing load on nature, including the natural protected terrritories which due to their status have kept a unique potential and beautiful natural landscapes. Recreational load is a huge non-regulated anthropogenic factor that transforms their ecosystems. Solving the problem of putting recreational flows in order requires limiting recreational load, and there is a need in determining a unit of recreational capacity. The article presents the results of comparative estimation of recreational load for 32 specially protected water reservoirs of the Republic of Tatarstan. For assessing recreational load, the methods by I.P. Shamardina and S.E. Jorgenson of evaluating recreational potential of lakes was used which are based on assessing water surface area and water volumes. According to Jorgenson method the protected water objects of the republic were divided into four groups: with recreational capacity over 20000 people per year, from 10000 to 20000 people per year, from 5000 to 10000 people per year and less than 5000 people per year. It is stated that the maximal recreational capacity (over 20000 people per year) is characteristic for the biggest lakes in the republic: Arkhiyereyskoye Lake, Kovalinskoye Lake, Salamykovskoye Lake, Shchuchye Lake, and Yurtushinskoye Lake. These popular recreational lakes offer all the conditions for developing a wide range of water tourism and recreation without any harm to ecology. The recreational capacity of the most part of protected water basins in Tatarstan is 5000 people per year or less. There it is recommended to organize tourist-recreational activity. It was shown that the volume of actual recreational load on the protected lakes in spring and summer does not exceed over the norm. There is a potential possibility to use these objects for recreation and tourism on condition that any activity within the basisns should be strictly controlled and it should be restricted to certain types of recreational use.