Impact of tourism activities on water pollution in the West Lake Basin (Hangzhou, China)

• Main Authors: Sun Qiong, Liu Zheng
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: De Gruyter 2020-11-01
• Series: Open Geosciences
• Subjects: tourism activities; river basin water; pollution; impact
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1515/geo-2020-0119

This paper introduced the development of tourism and its impact on the water environment. Then, taking the West Lake Basin as an example, the change of water quality in the basin between 2007 and 2018 and the changes of tourism population, tourism economic income, and tourism garbage between 2007 and 2018 through Hangzhou Tourism Bureau were investigated to analyze the impact of human tourism activities on the water environment of the West Lake Basin. The results showed that the change in curve trends of the comprehensive pollution index, number of tourists, tourism economic income, and tourism garbage in the West Lake Basin was similar, all rising; reasons for the increase of water pollution in the basin are that the increase in the number of tourists led to the increase of garbage and the government pursued the tourism economic benefits unilaterally and neglected the pollution brought by the tourism activities. Finally, we put forward three measures to reduce pollution.