An investigation into the response of the soil ecological environment to tourist disturbance in Baligou

Xiaolong Chen; Fangyuan Cui; Cora Un In Wong; Hongfeng Zhang; Feiyang Wang

doi:10.7717/peerj.15780

An investigation into the response of the soil ecological environment to tourist disturbance in Baligou

PeerJ. 2023 Sep 1:11:e15780. doi: 10.7717/peerj.15780. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Xiaolong Chen^{1

2}, Fangyuan Cui³, Cora Un In Wong¹, Hongfeng Zhang¹, Feiyang Wang⁴

Affiliations

¹ Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Macao Polytechnic University, Macao, China.
² Department of Management, Henan Institute of Technology, Xinxiang, Henan, China.
³ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Henan Institute of Technology, Xinxiang, Xinxiang, Henan, China.
⁴ School of Economics, Trade and Management, Xinjiang Institute of Technology, Aksu City, China.

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to understand the response patterns of the soil ecological environment of the Macau Wetland Park to different levels of tourist interference and to provide a scientific basis for the rational development of the Bali Gou ecological tourism plan and the protection and management of the scenic area's ecological environment. Combine the methods of field collection and laboratory physical and chemical data analysis to analyze the impact of the strength of tourism disturbance on the soil ecological environment of Baligou. During the tourist activities in Baligou, the human factors in the process have an impact on the physical aspects of the scenic area's soil, such as soil bulk density, color tone, porosity, compactness, capacity, and leaf litter. In addition, pH value, soil enzyme activity, organic matter, and heavy metals in the soil have caused some interference. The overall data show that the dynamic of soil indicators is background area < buffer area < disturbed area,where the sample area is affected by human trampling and infrastructure construction and other disturbances leading to regular changes in the content of Pb and Cr in the sample soil, while the content of other heavy metals is lower than the national standard.The range of the most extreme values of the SRI integrated soil ecological response evaluation index was A1 disturbance area = 4.679 and C1 background area = 1.263, respectively. The larger the value of the SRI response index, the greater the impact and negative effect of the disturbance influence of tourism activities on the soil ecological environment of the scenic area, and the higher the level of response of the soil ecological environment of the scenic area to the disturbance of tourism activities. Moderate and reasonable tourism development activities play a role in promoting soil quality in scenic areas. Therefore, it is suggested to carry out reasonable ecological environment planning and take certain macro-measures to prevent the deterioration of the soil ecological environment, so as to achieve a win-win situation of ecological environmental protection while developing the tourism economy in scenic areas.

Keywords: Baligou Scenic Spot; Soil ecological environment; Tourism interference.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Chromatography, Gas
Data Analysis
Environment*
Humans
Soil*

Substances

Soil

Grants and funding

This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, grant number 71864035, the Key Scientific Research Project of Colleges and Universities of Henan Province, grant number 19A790008, and the Doctoral Research Foundation of Henan Institute of Technology (Project No: KQ2009). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.