| Tourism has become a dynamic and promising industry in China in recent two decades.The rapid development of tourism,however,has brought a tremendous ecological pressure to the environment.The impacts of tourism activities on the environment have been often detrimental.Evaluation of tourism carrying capacity is imperative in order to have a comprehensive understanding of its tourism’s development and sustainability.As a study site,one of the most famous tourist islands in China-Zhoushan Archipelago,was selected.Ecological footprint,as an effective and operable indicator,was applied to quantitatively assess the tourism ecological carrying capacity of Zhoushan municipality during the year 2010-2014,and geospatial technologies were used for regional analysis.Zhoushan,including Dinghai and Puto two districts,Shengsi and Daishan two counties,is a unique port and tourist city,with 1390 islands,abundant natural scenic sights and cultural resources.It is also well known as "Buddhist Paradise on the Sea".Based on ecological footprint model,the tourist consumption was broken down into typical ecological footprint categories of tourism:food,accommodation,transport,sightseeing,purchasing and entertainment,which were used to build the model and perform calculation.The composition and dynamic changes of tourism ecological footprint(TEF),as well as the tourism’s development and sustainability in Zhoushan were analyzed.Main results are as follows:(1)The tourism ecological footprint and local ecological footprint were both slowly increasing by 1.11%and by 5.38%per year,respectively between 2010 and 2014.The TEF of Zhoushan decreased in the four former years(2010 to 2013),but rebounded in 2014.Results of five-years’ TEF for the two districts and two counties showed that Putuo has the highest TEF,followed by Dinghai and Shengsi,with Daishan as the lowest.(2)In Zhoushan,TEF accounted for a remarkable proportion between 2010 and 2014.The proportion of TEF were 31.27%,29.82%,28.01%,25.37%,27.44%,respectively for the year of 2010-2014.The regional ecological footprint showed a general downward trend.Taking the view of the sub-region,the proportion of TEF was more than 40%in Putuo and Shengsi,while the TEF of Dinghai and Daishan accounted for only about 15%.In general,TEF made up a relatively significant share of the regional ecological footprint,suggesting that the impact of tourism development on the local ecological environment should catch our much attention.(3)Under the comprehensive effects of tourists’ and local human activities,Zhoushan remained a certain ecological surplus in 2010 and 2012,but some deficits in 2011,2013 and evident deficit in 2014,Among the districts/counties,Dinghai appeared to have a relatively large ecological carrying capacity deficit,while Shengsi possessed a great surplus,revealing a significant local imbalance of development.The variations in the tourism carrying capacity of each sub-region indicated that the closer the sub-region was to the continental,the worse the ecological environmental quality it had.In summary,there is an ecological deficit with a growth of ecological footprint,indicating an unsustainable development trend in Zhoushan.And the dramatically different distribution of ecological footprint in sub-regions indicates that the regional development was unbalanced.Moreover,the proportion of tourism ecological footprint of Zhoushan in the regional ecological footprint showed a downward trend.That is the development of tourism was slightly slower than that of the overall regional development in Zhoushan.This study mainly took district/county as the basic unit,which could not show the substantial variation existed within a district/county.Then,its geospatial resolution is coarse.With regards to future work,it is necessary to establish a more comprehensive evaluation system of tourism ecological carrying capacity,with the consideration of regional economic and social factors.In addition,detailed soil properties,terrain features and other physical environmental characters could be further incorporated to improve the regional ecological carrying capacity assessment. |
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