Research on calculating methods for tourism carrying capacity of caves

After reviewed and analyzed the relevant literature at home and abroad, it is found that there are some weaknesses in the existed calculating methods for tourism carrying capacity of caves in the following aspects. (1) It is unscientific to calculate the tourism carrying capacity with single method, because of the difference of the energy and shape of the caves can not be discovered. (2) The value of tourist turnover rate in the calculation is too simple, because of the absence of full consideration on the special cave environments. (3) In determining the final value of show caves tourism carrying capacity, blindly applied the relevant stipulations of General Specification for Tourism Planning, and it’s unreasonable to choose the minimum value of ecological environment capacity, social mentality capacity, the sum of space capacity and facility capacity. (4) Because of the temperature in caves is very stable, heat method has little practical significance in calculating show caves tourism carrying capacity if only from visitors’ point. (5) Analysis on the regime of the tourism carrying capacity is often neglected in current calculation methods. To obtain a reasonable tourism carrying capacity of show caves, it should be based on the specific situations of caves in determining suitable calculating methods; appropriate intervals between two groups of visitors should be considered when calculate the turnover rate value of the tourism carrying capacity; for the value's choice of basic space standards, it is proposed the cave hall range from 3 to 5㎡/person, the cave corridor 5～10m/person. The maximum value of CO2 density in show caves should be determined according to the different caves’ specific situations and uniform standards should not be set up. It is recommended the CO2 volume exhaled by visitors should be 25 L/h and the CO2 background value in the cave air should be subject to the monitoring data of each caves. The controlling factors in the environments should be taken as important bases in the calculation.