Environmental Impact Assessment of the Spatial Organization of the Nizhnekhopersky Natural Park of the Volgograd Region

The article considers the problem of territorial protection of nature as a factor impeding the socioeconomic development of settlements located within the borders of the Nizhnekhopersky natural park. The key problem of the functioning of regional specially protected natural territories is the contradiction between the need to protect undisturbed natural-territorial complexes and the development of settlement territories that find themselves in the zone of limited economic activity. The development of settlement territories involves the removal of existing restrictions on the civil circulation of land plots, the construction and reconstruction of capital construction facilities. Solving the problem of economic stagnation by adjusting borders and excluding settlements from the natural park entails the need to conduct an environmental impact assessment of future economic activities in areas seized from specially protected natural areas. The forecast assessment of the consequences of possible anthropogenic impacts on the landscapes and ecosystems of the Nizhnekhopersky natural park after changing its area, functional organization and environmental management regimes in the allocated areas was carried out using a modified network method. The results of the research showed that the strengthening of the anthropogenic press as a result of the implementation of measures for the deployment of processing production, the construction of roads and engineering communications (electrification, gasification), housing construction, as well as due to the increase in recreational load, including the spread of uncontrolled recreation, the environmental efficiency of the natural park will naturally decrease.