RMNP is one of the most visited national parks in the USA, with 3.3 million visitors in 2012 across 1075 km 2 and 571 km of hiking trails. This paper examines impacts of increased visita-tion leading to human trampling of vegetation and soil along several trails in Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP) to understand how abiotic factors and level of use can influence trail conditions. They mostly have high and medium accessibility (31.38% and 41.77% respectively). The transport routes inside the massif amount to about 162 km, of which 56 km are marked tourist trails. The results showed that in a proportion of 43.41%, the massif has average accessibility, which offers the possibility of developing various types of mountain tourism. Intersection of parameters has led to the establishment of accessibility ranges for both the entire mountainous area and, in particular, for the tourist routes.
The accessibility of the massif was determined by the analysis of three factors (declivity, land cover and transport infrastructure) which constituted the main input data of the applied model. The study area is represented by Cozia Massif, located in the South of the Southern Carpathians and enrolled almost entirely in the area of Cozia National Park.
In this context, this study aims to assessing the accessibility of landforms by analyzing a series of factors (declivity, land cover, road network), determining the accessibility by sectors of the tourist routes, highlighting the parameters with the greatest importance in calculating accessibility, determining the degree of difficulty of tourist trails, as well as the identification of areas where low accessibility generates specific forms of tourism (alpinism and climbing). Restriction is mainly given by the degree of accessibility of the landforms through its morphometric and morphographic parameters. It can be considered a factor of favorability or restrictiveness for the development of tourist activities. Relief, through altitude, specific landforms and processes, through the morphology of valleys and interfluves, influences the practice of different types of tourism in a given area.
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