The Natural Potential of Mountains in Bulgaria and Its Sustainable Use - Sustainable Development in Mountain Regions: Southeastern Europe - page 48

them attractive destinations not only at the national but especially recently at the
international scale too. The rich resource potential of Rila, Pirin, the West Rhodopes
has been used for the creation of sport bases (Belmeken, Malyovitsa and others), as
well as of whole mountain complexes (Bansko, Borovets, Pamporovo). Naturally,
parallel to the advantages of relief, the entire landscape diversity, and especially the
favorable climatic conditions for the formation of a thick and durable snow cover
have to be taken into account for the winter sport specialization.
The medical-geographic aspect of the resource assessment of relief is connected
first of all with its individual properties (altitude, exposition, dismemberment,
slopes), but also with the effect of the properties of the other natural components
that are indirectly influenced by it, on the psycho-emotional state of man, especially
in the case of moving along routes and encountering new and interesting sites.
At a greater height in the mountains the human organism is also favorably
affected by clean air due to the lower general and bacterial pollution as well as due
to higher ionization, especially noticeable around swift-flowing rivers and waterfalls
(Danilova, 1980 ).
The rugged terrain exerts definite health recovery and strengthening impacts dur-
ing movement along routes on the so-called “health-paths,” naturally taking under
consideration certain norms for personal physiological loading.
In summary, as already pointed out, the assessment of mountain relief is
expressed in two ways: on the one hand, with its role as a decisive factor for the
hydroclimatic and soil-vegetation conditions of a territory and via these factors -
for a number of economic activities, and on the other hand - with its role directly
influencing recreational-tourist resources for man, including those with curative
effects.
5.2.2 Assessment of Climate
The thermal conditions of the mountains of Bulgarian territory with different situa-
tions and heights vary within a broad range but in general according to altitude belts
the differences are of the order of 10-20 ◦ S, for each belt, both for the minimum
average monthly temperatures in January and for the maximum average monthly
temperatures in July. The average temperatures naturally decrease with height - in
winter from 0-2 ◦ S in the lowest belts to -8 to -10 ◦ S in the highest, and in sum-
mer - respectively from more than 22 ◦ to less than 10 ◦ S, the annual temperature
amplitude being almost unchanged (on the average 19-21 ◦ S) (Table 5.2 ). There
are greater differences in the extreme maximum temperatures, which are more than
30 to less than 10 ◦ S in winter, and from more than 40 to about 15 ◦ S in summer
from the low towards the high parts, while the extreme minimum temperatures show
approximately equal values everywhere - from -15 to -30 ◦ S in winter and from -5
to +5 ◦ S in summer, and in the transitional seasons they are -5 to -20 ◦ S in autumn
and -20 to -25 ◦ S in spring, which shows that the spring season in the mountains is
colder than the autumn one.