Environmental Vulnerability Assessment in Abassabad Protected Area in the Face of Human Impact and Natural Disturbances

Despite the large global biodiversity conservation efforts, there are many threats including land-use/cover changes, climate change, habitat fragmentation, and anthropogenic activities that can increase the potential vulnerability of a natural protected area. The challenge for conservation managers is to ensure the long-term sustainability of an area by preserving its ecological values against natural and human pressures. This research proposes an integrated use of GIS–based Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) for vulnerability assessment of Abbasabad Protected area, Eastern part of Isfahan province, to foster conservation strategy in the study area. For this purpose, after intensive literature review, and field visit the most important criteria were identified and using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), problem solving structure was formed, and then the database contains criteria layers was prepared. The criteria were divided into two main groups including 1) biophysical criteria, and 2) disturbances, and then criteria importance was obtained with poll from experts. The data analyses have been done by Expert Choice software. The results showed that disturbance criteria are more important comparing biophysical criteria for determining priority areas for conservation planning in the study area. The final map can be used to assess habitat condition, Vulnerability to environmental pressures and identifying areas with high risk. Based on the result, approximately 17 percent of the study area that is located in the North and East part of the study area is the most vulnerable and 15 percent of the area that is located in the central part, are less vulnerable.