Identifying Required Criteria for Prioritization of Ecological Restoration (Case Study: Khojir National Park)

Human activities and habitat fragmentation in protected areas and ecological sensitive regions can have negative impacts on wildlife populations. Khojir National Park is among one of the most sensitive national parks in Iran, and is affected by frequent and intense disturbances in a human-dominated landscape. In recent years, ecological restoration has been highly recommended to reduce the negative impacts of human disturbances on natural ecosystems. The main objective of this study was determining the required criteria and their relative importance to assessment the ecological priority area in Khojir National Park in order to the conservation of biodiversity. For this purpose, after intensive literature review, and field visit, the most important criteria were identified and using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), problem solving structure was formed, and then the database contains criteria layers was prepared. The criteria were divided into two main groups including 1) biophysical criteria, and 2) disturbances, and then criteria importance was obtained with poll from experts. The data analysis have been done by Expert Choice software. The results showed that disturbance criteria with 0.712 weight is more important comparing biophysical criteria for determining priority areas for ecological restoration and conservation planning in the study area.