Abstract:

‘Red Beds Desert’ is a special degradation landscape,and one type of red beds landform with desert-like landscape, distributed on red beds mother rock and it’s also called as ‘red beds badland’. Its formation is called ‘Red Beds Desertification’. In the course of land extreme degradation, the red beds are influenced by humanity, original ecological structure on the earth’s surface is damaged, and then by the action of exogenetic force, the soil layer is rapidly eroded and the bedrock or its weathered crust is exposed, and finally land productivity is exhausted. Due to the special natural aspects, with excessive resource exploitation by humans, a kind of special process of land degradation-redbeds desertification occurred in redbeds areas in Southern China. The interruption of people is the trigger factor, and strong weathering and water erosion are dynamic factor. Red beds desert can be subdivided into two types, redbeds desertification with bare top and badlands-like redbeds desertification. In this article, we put more emphasis on the badlands-like redbeds desertification and its tourism exploitation. In China, redbeds desert (especially in humid regions) received no attention, we analyzed its feasibility by discussing its features, types, and so on. Red beds deserts are tensely distributed in Guangdong, Jiangxi, Hunan and other humid areas in Southern China. Generally, the areas of serious desertification are less developed areas and thus it’s significant to study red beds desert and its rational development and utilization. The protection and utilization of badlands-like redbeds desertification abroad has three main approaches, first, protection for the purpose, second, fix it for farming, third, open to tourists as one special landscape. This article points out that as a tourism resource, because of its desolation, fire-like collour against the landscape of green mountains and clear waters in South of China, redbeds desert can be a attraction with features of common sense subversion, ecological science popularization and integrated landscaping and that it also has high tourism development value and feasibility to tourists. Redbeds desert is fourth grade tourism resource containing recreational value, science and educational value, economic value, environmental value, social value et al. The exploitation of redbeds desert should not follow the conventional mode. Only maintaining landscape without vegetation and optimizing the surrounding environment can ensure the comprehensive benefits of exploitation. This article claims that during the development course, in the principle of environmental protection, characteristics strengthening and comprehensive benefit maximization, attention should be paid to agricultural tourism and science popularization tourism according to resource endowment in red beds deserts and landscape composition. Conceiving different kinds of tourism products by combination of historical culture, country relaxation, mountains and waters, and combination of red beds desert and ecological demonstration area. red beds knowledge popularization tourism, eco-agriculture tourism and red beds countryside tourism and photography theme tourism should be developed. Meanwhile, this paper also claims that measures should be adopted to suit the local conditions and that reasonable planning should be made for the resource features, market demand and environmental protection, to seek differential development with similar scenic spots nearby, cooperate with scenic spots nearby and realize regional tourism development in complementarity.

Key words: humid area of Southern China, Red Beds Desert, tourism development, resource value, development mode