Birdwatching tourism infrastructure planning in the Ria Formosa Natural Park (Portugal)

We investigated the Ria Formosa Natural Park located in the lagoon of the same name; it is famous for a great diversity of bird species and offers outstanding possibilities for the development of a special type of ecological tourism, birdwatching, that attracts birdwatchers from across the globe. It is shown that the existing natural resources on this territory should be complemented by an appropriate infrastructure and the rules in order to ensure tourism sustainability and development in connection with a high ecological significance of the territory and a heavy demand from visitors. Using landscape approach and methods of geoinformationbased landscape-interpretation mapping, extrapolating the density of different bird species, calculating integral indicators for assessing ornithological resources as well as infrastructure development techniques, we undertook a planning procedure of the birdwatching tourism infrastructure, including trails and observation points. As initial data, we used vegetation and soil maps, topographic maps, space images, data on the density of bird species in different biotopes, and field investigations. We generated the population density maps for each bird species as well as the biotope assessment map for all bird species, based on calculating the sum of the products of densities of each species by the ecological value of the species. Also, the landscape map was used to develop the territorial zoning map, having regard to the possibilities and limitations of constructing trails of different classes. Using spatial cross-matching of the assessment maps for ornithological resources and the trail zoning map, we identified places holding promise for the construction of the birdwatching tourism infrastructure. It is shown that the suggested method provides a means of making a proximate assessment of the territory from different perspectives, based on knowledge of a territory’s landscape structure; it is a prompt and inexpensive technique as contrasted to field investigations of the entire territory; however, it calls for further detailed investigation into promising areas.