Impacts of Tourism on Water Environment of Qiandao Lake

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热心网友时间：2023-10-27 09:46

WANG Feier¹⁾　CHEN Yingxu¹⁾　LU Huanchun¹⁾　XIA Fengyi¹⁾　Liu Hui²）

1　Introction

Based on economic contribution,tourism is considered to be the largest instry in the world and still develops very fast（Masberg,1999）.With an estimated annual growth rate of 9% since 1980’s,the total income of the international tourism instry reached $432 billion in 1996（Cui,1999）.Because of improving economies and increasing leisure time,tourism will continue to increase worldwide.Tourism instry has benefited local community and becomes main instry in local economy in some places.But all kinds of effects have arisen from tourism development,tourists and tourism activities;negative impacts,however,have been the norm（OECD,1980;Gartner,1996）.

It is well known that tourist and tourism development will affect the ecosystem,which has been studied by a lot of researchers（Guan,2000;Liu,1998;Gössling,2001;Backhurst,2000）.Not only the activities of tourists such as birdwatching,sightseeing,picnicking,fishing,hiking,swimming,but also the activities of tourism resource developers,landowners and travel agencies,will disturb the ecosystem in some extent.Many studies have been carried out on the effects of tourism on vegetation and animal,while few on the effects on lands,air and water qualities（Wu,1996）.In this paper,we concentrate on the effect of tourism development on water quality.

2　Study area

Qian Lake lies in Chun’an County,west of Zhej iang Province and is located between 118°34’ and 119°15’E,29°22’ and 29°50’N.With the surface area of 573 square kilometers,it is the biggest reservoir in Zhej iang Province and services mainly as generating electricity,irrigation,fishery,controlling flood,and drinking water source.

The catchment ’ s area of Qian Lake is 10442 square kilometers,with 60%in Anhui Province.There are about twenty main rivers such as Xin’an River,Wuqiang River entering the lake.Normally,the water level of Qian Lake is 108 meters and the storage capacity is 17.84 billion m³accordingly.The average annual water quantity entering lake is 9.45 billion m³and 9.107 billion m³flows out through Dam.

3　Tourism development in Qian Lake

With clean water,green hills,grotesque rocks and caves,rich cultural and historical heritages,Qian Lake is attractive and is very famous in the country.In the recent years,more and more people over the world come to Qian Lake and the tourism instry develops quickly.All kinds of tourist activities such as sightseeing,fishing,hunting,swimming,visiting farmhouse are developed and Qian Lake becomes a popular tourist destination.

In 1998,tourists to Qian Lake rose to 2.8 million,compared with 3500 in 1982.And the income of tourism instry reached 321 million Yuan RMB in 1998（Fig.1）.For 2010 and 2020,6 million and 9.6 million arrivals are predicted respectively.Such development will indicate more than three-fold increase of arrivals ring 1998～2020,while the total income of tourism instry will grow even faster to 1.7～1.9 billion Yuan RMB in 2020.

Fig.1　Tourist arrivals and tourism mcome growth 1982～1988.（Source:Chu'nan County Statistical Yearbook,1999）

4　Water environment of Qian Lake

4.1 Water quality

Qian Lake supports the local instrial,agricultural and domestic water demand.Moreover,it locates at the upstream of Qiantang River system,the biggest river system in Zhejiang Province.For these reasons,its water quality is very important to local and down-stream community.

The qualities of eight sites were classified into their respective water quality categories ac-cording to Chinese National Environmental Quality Standards for Surface water（GHZB1-1999）in Table 1.It suggests that the water quality in the lake is good comparing with most lakes or reservoirs in the country.But problems still exist.Total nitrogen and total phosphorus,which are main indiccs t o cause overnutrition,are serious according to the standards.

Table 1　Compiling of 8 sites according to Chinese surface water quality standards

Source:Chun’an Environmental Monitoring Station（1999）.

4.2　Factors impacting water quality

Water quality of Qian Lake is influenced by various factors including surface runoff,point sources,non-point sources,precipitation,and so on.The pollution load of COD,total N,total P entering lake in 1996 are showed in Table 2.

Table 2　The distribution of pollution load entering lake in 1996（unit:tons）

Source:Hu,Use and Protection of the water resource of Qian Lake（1998）

Table 2 indicates that the biggest pollutant load is from upstream runoffs,and those from runoffs of Chunan County are the next.Pollutants within runoffs are mainly proced by non-point source,which include agriculture,aquiculture and tourism（Hu,1998）.Furthermore,some domestic sewage from hotels and restaurants isn’t collected by sewer pipes and is dis-charged into the lake directly.Tourism is not the main factor influencing the water quality of whole lake according to Table 2.However,it can deteriorate some parts.With the development of tourism,its impact will be more significant.

5　Quantity of pollutants from tourism instry

Tourism instry in Qian Lake impacts the water quality from the following sources:sewage generated by hotels,inns and restaurants,wastewater and rubbish from yachts and the activities in islands,wastewater from the procing process of related procts.

5.1　Hotels,inns and restaurants

A wide range of hotels,inns and restaurants have been built in the study area in the past decades,and the construction will continue.Local 80 hotels,inns and restaurants had been investigated to obtain data on pollutant generation.Questionnaire and field monitoring were administered to sampling hotels,inns and restaurants in 1998.The results are showed in Table 3.

Table 3　Pollutants quantity generated by hotels,inns and restaurants in study area in 1998（unit:tons）

①sewage discharged meets national standards in bracket.

Among 80 samples,only 22 had sewage treatment facilities.Some treated sewage by digestion tanks,others like indivial restaurants discharged sewage directly into sewer pipe.Be-cause there’ s no sewage treatment plant in the town,treated or untreated sewage was dis-charged into the lake finally.Only 40%of the discharged sewage met the national standards.

5.2　Yachts

Yachts are the main tools to travel on the lake.There are 71 yachts with 5969 seats and 140 motorboats with 1200 seats in Qian Lake.Most yachts provided food without any sewage treatment facilities,thus polluted water by sewage（from food preparation and wash-room）,rubbish and waste oil.

There are about 7000 tons of sewage generated by these yachts and the amounts of COD,total nitrogen and total phosphorus were 21,1.8,0.18 tons respectively in 1998.Most of sewage are discharged into the lake directly.The pollutant from yachts is waste oil.Oil pollution not only destroys the scenic of water,but deteriorates aquatic ecosystem.The waste oil is made up of fuel oil resie,leaking oil and some cleaning oil.The total waste oil of yachts in Qian Lake was 4 tons and wastewater with oils was 160 tons in 1998.The concentration of oil in wastewater varied from 500mg/L to 1200mg/L.In the investigation,we found that the waste oil recovery devices in most yachts didn't work normally and lots of waste oil was dis-charged into the lake.

5.3　Activity of tourist in islands

The main factors threatening water quality in islands are sewage and rubbish.Most of the sewage in islands are treated by digestion pool and then discharged into the lake.Rubbish is collected by Environmental Sanitation Department.About 5 tons rubbish can be collected per day,and more can be collected in the tourist peak period.However,there still have some floating resies on the lake.

5.4　Tourist procts instry

Qian Lake is a popular resort not only because of its beautiful scene,but also its rich lo-cal procts.People always buy some local procts when visit Qian Lake.In the procing process of local procts,a large amount of wastewater and the load of pollutants are generated,Most enterprises had no facilities and discharged wastewater into the lake or brooks around the lake,which accelerated the overnutrition of water.

6　The impact of tourism to water quality

Environment is the foundation for tourism development.Tourism,however,have negative and passive impact on environment.To water quality,the negative impact of tourism is more than passive one,as most cases showed.In this case,we investigated the change of water quality in Qian Lake caused by tourism.

Tourism means that people move to some place temporarily（Burger,2000）.The arrivals vary in the different seasons.The visitors to Qian Lake focus on weekends or national holidays ring April to October.In 1999,the arrivals were more than 40,000 in Labor Day and 70,000 in National Day,while the population of Qian Lake town was only 45,800.These temporary arrivals placed additional stress to the local environment.

Tourism has been an important factor to the water quality of some parts of area in Qian Lake.In order to make clear the relationship between tourism and the water quality of lake,we monitored the change of water quality in tourist dock,where the density of tourists was high.The results are showed in Table 4.

Table 4　Water quality in tourist docks（unit:mg/L）

Table 4 indicated that the water quality was worse in the peak time than in the ordinary time.With the tourist increasing,in addition,the pollutant loads increased rapidly.During National Day in 1999,the sewage generated by tourist reached about 25,000 tons and COD,TN,TP were about 12.6,1.1 and 0.01 tons respectively.In these days,the rubbish was more than 200 tons.Large pollutant load concentrates on peak time and threatens water quality of the lake.Lots of sewage and nutrient salts discharged into the water cause eutrophication.

Tourist’s activities is one factor on local environment.and infrastructure development is an-other one.Because of the limited time,we only investigated the impact of Chenggao Hill Resident Project,which was begun on April 20,1999,to explain the impact of tourism infrastructure construction on water environment.Six sites were selected as sampling sites.The results were showed in Table 5.

Table 5　Water quality around Chenggao Hill（unit:mg/L）

Table 5 indicated that the concentrations of total nitrogen and total phosphorus were smaller with the increasing distance from the bank and the correlation factor was high.Therefore,infrastructure development will impact on water quality to some extent and the main influencing factors are TN and TP.Just as the project of Chenggao Hill,water will be polluted by the development of tourist infrastructure.The result is eutrophication.

7　Management options

Environmental impact of tourism has been widely realized and local government paid attention to it in the past years.To protect water resource of Qian Lake,a series of policies have been applied,and several management departments have been established since 1990.There-fore,the ecological environment of Qian Lake is well kept by now.

With the tourism blooming,however,it is difficult to protect ecological environment only with the existing measures.So it is necessary to start an advanced management strategy right now.Such a management plan should involve consideration of controls on total numbers of yachts in lake,the way in which rubbish is collected,transported and disposed of,the way how sewage to be reced and treated,and so on.

Furthermore,the environmental consciousness of tourists is very important to protect tourism destination,which can be implemented by establishing environmental ecation system in scenic zone,adding environmental protection information in tickets,guidebooks,tourists maps and commentary of scenic sites.

8　Conclusion

The survey for Qian Lake reveals that the water quality at some areas is impacted by tourism instry.Sewage discharge leads to nutrient enrichment in near-shore waters.Rubbish and waste oil discarded in the water destroyed the view and quality of the lake in the scenic zone,and more arrivals would make it worse.As aquatic ecosystems are interconnected,the condition of one of these cannot be separated from others.Therefore,other impacts of tourism should also be considered,too.

There exists dialectical relationship between tourism and environment.To Qian Lake,tourism is a factor to threaten the local environment,which is the base of tourism on the other hand.How to protect the environment is urgent to local government.Environmental plan including pollution control measures should be made and applied with other plans such as tourist plan and green plan.Among all pollution control measures,management is very important to control the water quality of Qian Lake.

We estimate that there will be an increase of about 20% and 51% in the sewage discharge from tourism in 2005 and 2010 respectively,compared with 1998.In the future,it appears that tourism will contribute more in terms of the total pollution burden in Qian Lake region compared to the other factors because the treatment rate of instrial wastewater will be higher by enhanced national policy requirements.It is therefore of great importance that a comprehensive environmental management strategy for tourism instry be implemented for Qian Lake.In absence of such initiatives,water quality of Qian Lake may deteriorate further in the future,irrespective of the present efforts to control local pollution sources.

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