Nature based susceptibility assessment using GIS spatial decision-making systems in West Azerbaijan Provinces

We amid to identify and introduce nature-based tourism and its potentiality in West Azerbaijan province. The study area is famous for its environmental and natural landscapes which accordingly implies significant potentials for developing sustainable ecotourism which accordingly leads to improve the economic situation of this province as well. Within this research we applied GIS spatial decision support systems (SDSS) for data analysis and modelling the sustainable ecotourism in west Azerbaijan province. For this goal, 28 relevant criteria from different resources (e.g. physical properties, infrastructure, and facilities) were identified and processed using GIS-SDSS. GIS data aggregation method was applied to develop a final susceptibility map. Results indicated that about 57% of the study area represent a sustainability degree of moderate to significant for ecotourism development. The rest of 43 % basically locates in urban area, deserts resulted by Urmia lake drought which are not indicating a significance potential for ecotourism development. It has also to be highlighted in context of the 57 % there are also different level of sustainability in each area but results shows that ecotourism can be considered as one the main economic development in the study area. We conclude that, the obtained results are very important and critical for identifying nature-based tourism potential assessment. The results of this study provided valuable information for improving the situation as well organizing the sustainable ecotourism in the study area. Results are also great of important for decision makers and planners in light of developing a sustainable natural tourism.