RECREATIONAL ACTIVITY IN RIPARIAN FORESTS OF M. A. SHOLOKHOV MUSEUM-RESERVE

Recreational activity is the indicator, which reflects the cumulative impact of recreation on landscape complex and represents an integral indicator of recreational use of natural objects depending on the number of tourists on the item available for recreational use of space, time and prevailing forms of recreation, measured in person-days. The most important objective in addressing the problem of sustainable recreational use of forest resources today is the determination of maximum allowable recreational loads, their rules. As a result of researches on the territory of the meander part of the floodplain forests of the river Don, area of the protected natural landscape State M.A. Sholokhov Museum-Reserve, we identified the active recreational use of riparian plantings on the area of 431 hectares or 30.4 % of the total area of the studied territory. Prevailing forms of recreation are determined: roadless, obtaining and picnic one. Roadless form of recreation impact covers the largest part of areas suitable for recreational use (18 % of the total area) and it makes 256.3 ha. This form of recreation is common in largely undeveloped forest areas of the left bank and right bank of flood plain of the river Don near the villages of stanitsa Vyoshenskaya, Bazkovskaya and nearby hamlets. Picnic form of recreation is dominated on 5.5 % of the territory, but the impact caused by the consequences is the most aggressive ones. Estimated of unit values of recreational load in the prevailing forest type groups revealed that at most sites the actual load does not exceed the indicators of maximum permissible values and varies from 0.2 to 5.4 person-days./ha, given the landscape accessibility and the prevailing forms of recreation. The dependence of the distribution of resting people on the distance to the village is defined.