Recreation Suitability Assessment and Conservation-Compatible Spatial Screening in Sanjiangyuan National Park

Recreation suitability in national parks refers to the capacity of a place to support low-impact recreation while maintaining ecological integrity and complying with conservation objectives. In alpine protected areas, high landscape attractiveness does not necessarily indicate feasible recreation space because ecological fragility, remoteness, and strict protection requirements may constrain use. Using Sanjiangyuan National Park, China, as a case study, we integrated multi-source geospatial data to construct an Ecological Recreation Suitability Index from Ecological Recreation Provisioning, the Landscape Attractiveness Index, and the Wilderness Degree Index. WDI was transformed into a nonlinear compatibility function that constrained the realization of landscape attractiveness, and ecological support was then integrated with wilderness-compatible attractiveness. Relatively high- and high-suitability zones accounted for 30.88% of the valid assessment area and were mainly concentrated in the eastern and southeastern parts of the park, where higher ecological recreation provisioning and landscape attractiveness under suitable wilderness constraints jointly contributed to greater recreation suitability. Western and northwestern areas were constrained chiefly by weak ecological support and high wilderness conditions. These findings show that recreation suitability is not a direct expression of landscape attractiveness. The principal scientific contribution is a condition-dependent coupling structure that distinguishes potential attraction from conservation-compatible recreation suitability.