Przestrzenne zróżnicowanie rozmieszczenia obiektów zagospodarowania turystyczno-rekreacyjnego na obszarach lasów państwowych w Polsce

Forests are an area of great significance, regarding both educational and recreational needs of society. The article undertakes an issue of tourism infrastructure in the state forests in Poland, considering the its quantitative and qualitative variability. The analysis took into account the evaluation of usefulness of the state forest areas for different forms of tourism and recreation. Source material originated from the web site run by the State Forests and from the forestry statistical yearbooks. Obtained data was statistically analysed using the principal component analysis, Ward’s cluster analysis and correlation coefficients. The most popular tourist and recreational facilities in the State Forests include forest parking places (1486), educational trails (968), accommodation facilities (522), tourist routes and facilities other than accommodation such as education and museum facilities (252), viewpoints and towers, camping sites, resting places and swimming pools (345). Tourist infrastructure of the State Forests is characterized by significant spatial disparities across the country. The greatest concentration of the objects is characteristic for zachodniopomorskie (1138), lubuskie (934), podlaskie (880), pomorskie (816) and warmiń− sko−mazurskie (777) voivodeships, while the lowest concentration can be found in świętokrzyskie (184), łódzkie (211) and opolskie (311) regions. There has been a noticeable, significant increase in the number of most of the elements of tourism and recreation infrastructure in the areas administrated by the State Forests. A characteristic feature of the tourism facilities in the State Forests is their strong concentration in the most wooded north−west and north−east voivodeships of Poland. Besides, there is high correlation between the number of management facilities and the number of public swimming areas.