Determine potential and social and cultural carrying capacity with the purpose of the establishment in ecotourism development (Case study: Southern Karkheh protected area, Iran)

The most important part to be considered is the determination of the carrying capacity of the protected areas, since these areas are able to accommodate a large number of tourists, so if these areas are not planned more accurately, the number of tourists will exceed the cc limit of the area. Resulting in instability and degradation of these areas, and therefore knowledge of the status of the area's cc will greatly help to control the damage. The aim of this study was determine potential, and social-cultural cc with the purpose of the establishment in ecotourism development. Therefore, in order to the determination of the potential of this area, calculation of the social-cultural cc after the identification of the social - cultural pressures using model PSR the social- cultural pressures regarding the calculation of the correction by applying the percentage corrections of the pressures and the relative importance using the techniques ANP and of each of them after the grading layer using the techniques WLC and builder model at Arc GIS10.5 combined. Social - cultural cc in the direction of the development of ecotourism determined. The results 50% of the content that the level region has high cc, 33% of the surface area has an cc and 17 percent of the level region has low cc. Findings of the research show that there is a low range of cc in the central part of the region; finally, based on the findings, suggestions have been made to increase the regional distribution cc.