Degradation of a protected mountain area by tourist traffic:case study of the Tatra National Park,Poland

Mountain protected areas are characterized by high biodiversity,which makes it a great challenge for managers to maintain a balance between their use and the stability of natural ecosystems.Maintaining that balance is particularly difficult in areas with high tourism pressure.The expected volume of tourist traffic should be considered at the planning stage of the tourist infrastructure development process.Insufficient capacity of tourist infrastructure can lead to environmental degradation,which is hard,or at times impossible,to repair.In our research,we identified patterns of tourist footpath and road functioning in an environmentally protected area with high volumes of tourist traffic.Data from geomorphologic mapping was analyzed in order to identify tourist footpath and road structures in the Tatra National Park(TNP).Fieldwork was conducted in several stages between 1995 and 2019.Orthophotomaps from the years 1977,2009,2017 and 2019 were used to identify and compare degraded zones along selected tourist footpaths.Degraded zones were defined as areas surrounding a footpath or tourist road with a mean width larger than or equal to 10 meters,with heavily damaged or completely removed vegetation and exposed,weathered cover,where geomorphic processes that would not take place under normal conditions are readily observable.The examined tourist footpaths and roads vary in terms of their morphometric parameters.Research has shown important differences between mean and maximum footpath width as well as maximum incision depth for the forest zone versus the subalpine and alpine zones.A lack of differences in these parameters was noted between the alpine and subalpine zones.Research has shown that an increase in the surface area of degraded zones found adjacent to tourist footpaths occurred in all the studied geo-ecological zones in the study period.However,the largest increase occurred atop wide ridgelines found in the alpine zone.Degraded zones may be an indication of exceeding the tourist carrying capacity of a mountain tourist area.Mass tourism in TNP contributes to the formation of degraded zones adjacent to footpaths,whose continuous evolution may lead to irreversible changes in local relief.

Environmental Impact of Using Different Energy Sources for Family House Heating

Environmental impacts of using various sources of energy in heating a family house with 180 m2 of floor surface were compared by means of the SimaPro computer programme and attached to its databases, describing the environmental impacts of using typical materials and technologies. The set of compared heat energy sources comprised nine different sources. After normalisation （which meant recalculating the impacts into their proportions to the average impact of the kind, experienced by an average European in a year）, weighting （which meant attaching arbitrary weights to three aggregate impact categories according to a methodology Eco-indicator 99 E/E） and summation of the weighted results expressed in so-called ecopoints, the coal combustion furnace turned out to have the greatest impact. It was followed by an electric stove and an oil burning furnace. The wood burning furnace and the heat pump had the smallest impact, almost equal in size. Results indicate that in case of renewable energy carriers like wood, straw and pellets, the total environmental hazard factor in 70% and more is derived from the respiratory harmful inorganic emissions. Extending the analysis by a LC assessment of equipment （boilers and pumps） might change the order of technologies.