ИСТИНА

The National Park “Valdayskiy” was established to preserve the unique lake-forest complex of the Valday Upland and create conditions for the development of organized recreation on this territory. Incomparable beautiful views of different landscapes attract thousands of tourists from various region of Russia. The greater number of them prefers lakeshores for camping, so special attention was paid to the study of riparian and shallow water vegetation of lakes in zones of different recreational pressure to establish the patterns of vegetation digression. The materials of our observations are supplemented with data on the attendance of tourist sites collected by the park staff. The recreational capacities of the region were studied on the base of bioclimatic indices according Bodman’s indices and subjective temperature. Evaluation of them allows Valday to be attributed to regions with a lack of thermal resources, in which it is preferable to develop dynamic types of recreational activities practically all over the year. For soft recreational activity the Valday Hills are available with limitation from 7 to 8 months in a year and without limitation – nearly 1 month in a year. Even during this period (mid-July to mid-August), there is a massive influx of tourists and intensive use of recreation sites on the lakeshores. This leads to degradation of riparian forest and meadow vegetation; destruction of the protective (buffer) zone of aquatic vegetation, erosion of the banks near camps, pollution of shallow water by sewage and garbage. Thus irregular recreational pressure on water bodies leads to local degradation of natural complexes and eventually to lowering the aesthetic value of riparian landscapes. But such factors as a moderately continental climate with a prolonged cold winter and high relative air humidity throughout the year, reducing the period of a strong recreational pressure, as well as the complicated accessibility of many lakeshores reduce the negative impact of recreation and delay the destruction of natural vegetation. For nature conservation in the Park it is necessary to organize: monitoring of lakeshore’s complexes, control of recreational use, determine pressure on the part of tourists, normalizing and differentiating them by the types of possible use and conservation regime.