Recreation suitability zoning in part of the Oman sea coast

Background and Objective 

Ecotourism activities lead to the development and environmental conservation if they performed on the basis ‎of environmental potential and continue through appropriate exploitation and conservation of managed ‎areas. Therefore, ecotourism is known as one of the kinds of sustainable tourism that with reasonable ‎management is able to meet the protection and development goals. One of the most ‎important management activities is zoning and spatial prioritization of suitable areas for tourism ‎development. Suitable areas have the best status of predefined evaluation criteria. The selecting process ‎of the appropriate zone involves two main steps typically; screening (identifying a limited number of ‎candidate zones from a wide geographical area according to a range of criteria), and evaluation. Land evaluation is a process of predicting the potential use of land-based on its attributes. Due to the ‎importance of zoning in tourism management, many studies have been done so far, but a review of ‎studies conducted in Iran showed that coastlines have been less considered in such studies. Therefore, ‎the present study intends to identify and prioritize suitable ecotourism areas in a part of the southern ‎coasts of the country according to ecological and socio-economic resources. The present study is to investigate the capability and zoning of the eastern watershed of Chabahar Gulf with a coastal length of 47 km for coastal tourism and also to identify and select the most suitable areas based on their preference in terms of criteria.

 Materials and Methods:

 At first, all possible criteria for land suitability evaluation for tourism development in the study area were selected according to the review of resources, and finally, using a questionnaire and Delphi method, the criteria were finalized. The identified evaluation criteria were in two forms of factor (continuous and discrete) and constraint as; Continuous factor criteria included; distance from the river, distance from the wetlands, distance from the mountains of Hezar-Dareh (Badlands)‎, distance from the port and the pier, distance from historical and cultural centers, distance from specific vegetation, distance from the specific animal, distance from agricultural lands, distance from the natural fountain, distance from rocky shores, distance from sandy shores, distance from the road, distance from rural areas, and distance from urban areas. Discrete factor criterion included; vegetation and restriction criteria included; wetland backline, river backline, and shore backline. Evaluation criteria were identified, prepared, and mapped. Finally Merged using the multi-criteria evaluation method (MCE) and the weighted linear ‎combination (WLC) approach. The weight of each factor ‎criterion was obtained by the analytic hierarchy process ‎‎(AHP) and all layers related to these criteria were ‎standardized and dimensionless by the fuzzy method. The ‎standardization of constraint criteria was performed by the ‎Boolean method.‎ Areas that have more than 70% suitability for the coastal ecotourism development and also have at least 9 hectares extension were identified as acceptable areas. These two filters were implemented by applying the Siteselect function.

 Results and Discussion:

The consistency ratio for the AHP were obtained 0.05, which is less than 0.1, therefore the weighting was done correctly. The filtered map (based on minimum area and minimum suitability) obtained from WLC showed that suitable areas for ecotourism development are along the coastline and mainly natural factors and spectacular geological attractions have been effective in this selection. The results of weighting the criteria show that rocky shores, sandy shores, and mountains of Hezar Dareh have the most weight among all operating criteria, which are respectively 0.19, 0.134, 0.12, and 0.09 and show the great attractiveness of these phenomena in attracting tourists from the experts' point of view. The resulting layer ‎of overlay was classified into two favorable and unfavorable classes. The results showed that the appropriate places for potential tourism were 233 hectares and are ‎located in seven zones along ‎the coast. Zones 4, 5, 2, and 3 had more priority, respectively based on the statistical characteristics of desirability, as well as the superiority of landscape features, proximity to the sea, and the greater accessibility, also the well-known locations. The field study also showed that these areas are more visited by tourists, which indicates the validity of the method and criteria used. Zones 7, 1 and, 6 are also in the next priority, respectively, which need more management and planning in terms of access to increase the tourism suitability. These results show the role of socio-economic factors, especially infrastructure. Ignoring it will lead to the elimination of recreational use or the imposition of irreparable damage to the environment.

 Conclusion:

 So far, our study area was less affected by accelerated development and its nature remains healthy. In this regard, allocating parts of the region to ecotourism landuse, if properly managed, can ensure the conservation of the environmental quality of the identification zones, because ecotourism is mentioned as the best policies of natural resources management which lead to the reduction of destructive factors and their sustainable protection, and on the other hand, by developing ecotourism sites and improving tourism facilities, the economic state of the tourist host community also improves. Among the identified zones, four zones 4, 5, 2, and 3 are suggested as the first priority ‎for tourism planning respectively.‎ Organizing, developing, and improving communication networks and roads in the region will increase the suitability of the region, especially zones 7, 1, and 6. Therefore, the development of communication networks and air transportation, maritime transportation, and Ground transportation and facilities and welfare and accommodation facilities needed by tourists are suggested, as well as maritime tourism tours to increase the region's attractiveness in attracting domestic and foreign tourists. Also, due to the high attraction of the mountains of Hezar-Dareh, which also have geological importance, it is suggested that parts of the study area be managed as a geological park or geopark. A more detailed study of the area is suggested to a spatial selection of coastal tourism activities with more comprehensive spatial information in the identified suitable areas in this study for future studies.