The Role of Landscape in Sustainable Tourism Development—A Study of Identification and Evaluation of Landscape Qualities of the Vrbanja Basin in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract

The concept of landscape has opened up a vast field of contemporary multidisciplinary research. Character identification, typology, digital presentation, protection and evaluation from the aspect of tourist suitability are some of the main topics. Unfortunately, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, there is a very small number of complex studies that try to study landscapes in the function of tourism development. The main purpose of the research is the identification of landscape characters, the creation of their typology, and the assessment of their suitability for the development of sustainable tourism in the area of the Vrbanja river basin. The methodological procedure consisted of three steps. The first was a desk study, which included a review of data from the available literature and maps of hydrological, geological, pedological, geomorphological, and climate studies of this area. In this way, the geographical basis of the research was created in the form of four thematic maps (relief, hydrographic, pedological, and forest complex maps) using the ArcGIS 10.8 software. The second step was the spatial identification of landscape types in the area of the studied basin. This was done in ArcGIS 10.8 by overlaying and combining the obtained thematic maps of the basin. The result was a map with four general types and 14 subtypes within the Vrbanja basin. The third and final step was the evaluation and assessment of the suitability of each type of landscape for tourism activities. The assessment was made by scoring factors of anthropogenic influence, natural characteristics, and visual impression on a Likert scale of 1–4. The final results of the research show that the high mountain areas with forest and semi-rural type and the hilly areas with forest and rural landscape type have the greatest overall suitability for the development of tourism.