Landscape Visual Assessment of Gheshlagh River Valley - Sanandaj City for Ecotourism Development

Tourism industry is growing fast as an ecological, economical and social opurtionaty because of global approaches to nature. Tourism in the way of growth depends on nature and its different aspects like environmental attractions, biodiversity, wild life, pristine environments and good climatic conditions. As Iran is full of these nature based attractions so a proper situation for developing nature based tourism rather than other forms of tourism is achievable. For planning, development and designing of landscape it’s important to detect and protect good views and locate functions in the best place. Gheshlagh River valley locates east of sanandaj city by the length of 90km and has good capacities for tourism development.This research suppose to assess visual and natural quality aspects of this river valley for environmental planning and designing. Hence, environmental units considered and classified from highest to lowest quality and diversity as superb, moderate and low levels then by a field survey of superb areas, all of good view locations and azimuth points of these areas selected. Finally 18 points determined. All of these points help us to design pathes,mountain recreational stations,walking pathes and other features of ecologes in relation to the number and carrying capacity of tourist.