The Environmental Effects of Land Use Change result from tourism activities/ Case Study: Central District of Tonekabon Township

One of the main challenges of recent decades (1380-1390), in rural areas of Iran is land use change as a result of tourism activities, so that become a national challenge and has extensive consequences. Environmental effects of mentioned challenge are considered as one of the most important items. Accordingly, this article seeks to identify and analyze the environmental Effects of land use changes resulting from tourism activities in rural areas of the central district of Tonekabon. The research method is descriptive-analytic and used both objective and subjective data based on questionnaires completed by the inhabitants of the villages. Data collected by questionnaires have been processed using SPSS statistical software, and based on research objective and nature of the data; one sample t-tests and Pearson were used. The results approved the relationship between “development of tourism” and “environmental effects” of land use change in the study area, but this relationship is the reverse. Thus, tourism development led to negative environmental effects more than positive ones. As well as other results showed no significant difference between the eleven surveyed villages in relation to environmental effects.