Study On The Relationship Of Hydropower Development And Tourism Resources Protection And Utilization Of Shuoduogang River Basin Of Northwest Yunnan Province

Hydropower development is the inevitable choice for China's energy construction and economic development. Hydropower resources of China are mostly located in the southwest underdeveloped mountainous areas with fragile ecological environment. There are many concentrative the world heritages and national scenic tourist destinations (national scenic area, national nature reserves, national geological parks, national forest parks, etc.) in these areas. Hydropower and tourism is the local economic base and pivotal industries. Basin-wide hydropower development is not only directly influence the development of tourism, but also bring the considerable environmental impacts, thereby counteract the development of tourism industry. Therefore, the conflict and contradiction among the development of hydropower, tourism industry and ecological environment protection are often prominent in these underdeveloped mountainous areas. Herein, Shuoduogang river of Shangri-La County in northwest region of Yunnan province is regarded as a demonstrative example. Firstly, the status of development of hydropower, tourism and iecological environment in Shuoduogang river basin were investigated and evaluated. Then the frangibility and fragile characteristics of ecological environment related to tourism in this basin were evaluated quantificationally. Accordingly, the influence of hydropower development and ecological environment and tourism industry were investigated. Consequently, the results were expected to provide the decision-making basis and reference for the hydropower development, environmental protection and tourism industry in the similar underdeveloped mountainous areas with fragile ecological environment. The main results and conclusions obtained are as follows:(1) Shuoduogang river is one of medium-sized rivers in northwest region of Yunnan province and possess the better development conditions for hydropower. The rational development of water resources accords with the demands of economic and social development planning and regional water utilization of Shangri-La County. Shuoduogang river are located in the Three Parallel Rivers area. There are abundant natural and cultural resources in this area and the development conditions for tourism are very excellent. But the conflict and contradiction between the development of hydropower and protection and utilization of environmental resources related to tourism industry are cannot be ignored.(2) the survey and analysis results show that the present situation of ecological environment in the region are benign, but exhibit obvious characteristics of the ecological fragility. This basin should be classified in the stronger area of ecological vulnerability. The characteristic of fragile ecological environment may be the limiting factor for the hydropower development, tourism development or even regional social and economic development.(3) based on the survey on the built hydropower station in Shuoduogang river basin, the influences of hydropower developments on the ecological environments related to tourism in the areas with concentrative tourism resources were comprehensively discussed. The results show that the typical influences include:the influences of occupying land by the construction projects and the inundation of reservoirs on the vegetation and biological diversity; the influences on land use, landscape and tourism resources; the operation of projects on the hydrological regime and water temperature; the influences induced by emigration resettlement on ecological environment, land use, socio-economics.(4) the results of research on the relationship between hydropower development and tourism industry in Shuoduogang river basin show that:the hydropower development can directly promote local economic development and indirectly to improve the tourism economy, improve the tourism infrastructure significantly even provide the new tourist attractions. The negative impacts on tourism development are as followings:the construction and operation of hydropower projects can disfigure the landscape and influence the religious and cultural resources related to tourism. The integrity of World Heritage sites "Three Parallel Rivers" and the surrounding scenic areas, natural protected areas and other environmentally sensitive areas can be interfered. The indicators for the tourism resources and environmental quality may be worsened. The protection and utilization acts can affect the economic, social and environmental benefits of the hydropower development in some extent. Although hydropower development planning accord with the goal of tourism development planning by and large, but the impacts on sustainable tourism development must by paid attention to.