Evaluation of natural and cultural-historical heritage of the Danube region in Serbia through cartographic presentation

Abstract

Geographic territory is the condition and framework of tourist development, the origin and destination of tourist movements. Natural resources, their attractiveness, quality and environmental preservation represent an extremely important potential for the development of tourism. The uniqueness and specificity of the natural resources of the Danube region in Serbia is an important part of the heritage, and its attractiveness is a significant component in the tourist offer of Serbia. The natural and throughout history strategic importance of the Danube has also influenced the rich and diverse cultural and historical heritage. Functionally connected natural and cultural values of historical importance represent an important tourist attraction and a prerequisite for the further development of this area. The tourist area of the Danube region in Serbia includes protected areas and individual localities of national and international importance, unique natural beauty and cultural values: Special Nature Reserve "Gornje Podunavlje", National Park "Đerdap", Bačka, Petrovaradinska, Beogradska, Smederevska, Ramska, Golubačka and Fetislam fortress, Lepenski Vir, Viminacium and numerous other specific landscape entities and localities. The geographical and historical connection of protected natural and cultural assets predetermines the use of this area for various types of tourism. This creates opportunities and activates the conditions for the development of complementary activities and affects the protection and improvement of the environment of the entire area. The planned development of tourism is defined through numerous sustainable development strategies both at the national and international levels. The Danube region is characterized by a unity of diversity that should be promoted as a spatially connected whole. The combined diverse natural and cultural-historical wealth of the Danube region in Serbia, as part of the European natural and cultural heritage, represents a great potential that needs to be further affirmed, protected and improved. The development of tourism and the study of space requires appropriate information support. The map is of great importance as a source and means of information dissemination for various analyzes and presentations of tourist content. The physiognomy of the Danube watershed area has been studied and represented on maps since ancient times. The map graphically displays and provides information about the location and characteristics of features, their distribution, spatial connections, state and dynamics of changes in space. Maps have a special cultural value in the preservation of natural and cultural heritage. They represent a document of cultural and historical heritage of importance for tourism. The map presents various contents of the tourist offer. Modern requirements are aimed at increasing the information capacity of tourist maps. In addition to the primarily created tourist maps, in the process of use, digital technology enables content transformation into multivariate presentations of geodata through the inclusion of a new type of data according to the set variables. By increasing the information capacity of digital cartographic content, the map is not a mere static graphic presentation of geographic space, but a dynamic, interactive portal for interconnection and distribution of geospatial data. Geovisualization techniques allow the user to extract and research purposefully needed information from a huge amount of data, implement graphical variants of data display in relation to different viewing angles, change indicators that enable comparison of facts, interrelationships and characteristics of geospace features.