Evaluating the Capability of Qurkhod Protected Area for Extensive and Intensive Tourism

Qurkhod protected area with an area of 43000 hectaresis located at the North Khorasan province and adjencent to Golestan national park. The area by having special settlement specifications, different wild life species and tourism attractios has a high potential for planning and tourism development.The current study was conducted to evaluate environmental capability of the area for extensive and intensive recreation. For this purpose, firsty the appropriate criteria for both extensive and intensive recreation were defined and since for each of functions, simultaneous evaluation of several criteria is needed, then multi-criteria evaluation method was used. Four criteria for extensive recreation and 12 criteria for intensive recreation and a limit layer for inhabitat of index species has been considered. The basic maps for each criteria was prepared and standardized by fuzzy method. Analytical hierarchy process (AHP) was used for weighting criteria and the Weighted Linear Combination (WLC) method used for combining the layers. The results showed that nearly 4800 hectares (approximately %11) of Qurkhod protected area was suitable for intensive outdoor recreation implementation, while nearly 3200 hectares (approximately %8) had the ideal conditions for extensive outdoor recreation development. Physical carrying capacity of the area was estimaed at about 11 persons per hectare.