Eco-Tourism Site Selection of Sahand Protected Area Using MCDM and GIS

The development of tourism in protected areas has many advantages for regional management and tourists. Therefore, identification of suitable and potential areas for expansion and development of tourism in protected areas is crucially important for sustainable exploitation of natural resources. The aim of this study was to identify suitable areas for centralized and extensive tourism of Sahand protected area by multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) method using the geographic information system (GIS). According to the effective criteria on the eco-tourism and also based on previous researchers and expert opinions, 12 criteria for a centralized resort and 11 criteria for extensive resort were selected by the Delphi method. And also analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and fuzzy method were prepared for classified maps. The classified maps included the distance maps from water sources, road, spring, river, residential areas, wildlife corridor, goat habitat and fault and height from sea level, slope, geographic direction, land flora, bedrock, and climate. Finally, the priority map of eco-tourism appropriate areas was produced using weighted linear combination (WLC) method and by applying the coefficients of the importance of each criterion to corresponding classified map. The results showed that about 7, 40, 25, 4 and 24 percent of the centralized resort area were very good, good, average, poor and unsuitable, respectively. Besides, about 43, 42, 13 and 2 of the extensive resort area were very good, good, average and poor, respectively.