Tourism Environmental Zoning Powers of Mazandaran Province to Develop Ecotourism

Locating potential areas of ecotourism is one of the important ideas in management and tourism development. This trend of tourism plays an important role in protecting environmental and economic resources of countries in the world. Its development in any country requires effective management and planning in this field. This research aims to identify potential areas of ecotourism in Mazandaran Province to protect natural resources and prepare the ground for sustainable financial resources for city management in this province. In terms of purpose, this research is applied and research method is descriptive-analytical. AHP, MCDM, fuzzy set interval value, and using results in geographical information system were used in order to identify potential areas of ecotourism in Mazandaran Province. The results indicated that the criterion of tourism potential (with relative normalized weigh of 0.311) had the most impact and the criterion of facilities and travel services (with normalized score of 0.120) had the least impact among four detected main criteria. However, detected areas for ecotourism development had the closest distance to tourism prominent centers and the farthest with undesirable areas as well.