THE PROSPECTS FOR RECREATIONAL DEVELOPMENT OF NORTH ALTAI IN VIEW OF BIOCLIMATIC CONDITIONS
North Altai is the best developed tourist part of the Altai mountain region distinguished by a high concentration of touristic objects of different levels and scales. The high importance of natural-climatic resources for the development of recreational nature management determines the topicality and purpose of the study. The research is based on the author’s technique for bioclimatic assessment of landscapes. Lack of heat in the human body in July, conditional temperature in January, atmospheric pressure, favorability of bioclimatic conditions in January and July serve as the criteria for a comfort degree of landscapes bioclimate. The assessed bioclimate of landscapes in North Altai allows us to identify the areas with best bio-climatic conditions for recreational development, namely these are low mountain landscapes and river valleys. Positive changes in bioclimatic conditions of North Altai were revealed due to calculated frequency of days with favorable for a man weather for the periods 1971–2000 and 2001–2011. It was found out that the number of days with adverse weather conditions decreased by 3 times, while those with a relatively favorable ones increased by 1,2 times. The study made it possible to specify the prospects for recreational development, i.e. the better use of climatic treatment and other outdoors tourist and recreational activities, the expansion of a comfort zone up to the midland and the increase in duration of a tourist season.