Zonation of Ecotourism potentials (Case Study: Sadeqabad, Bafgh, Yazd)

Today ecotourism as a dynamic and emerging industry has reached an increasing importance and different developed and developing countries are trying to develop ecotourism to protect the environment, reduce unemployment, improve income distribution, constructive and effective interaction with the world and the socio-economic and utilizing its political and socioeconmic resources and consequently facilitating ecotourism as a tool for sustainable development. An appropriate solution to ecotourism development is better identification of different areas in terms of ecotourism potentials and planning to evaluate the feasibility of attracting tourists, establishing resorts and providing infrastructures in these areas. Zonation is an attempt to integrate these parameters together. One of the main charactersitics of zonation is to find the suitable place for special amenities, tourism and ecotourism areas and so on in a way that various parameters such as area, distance from main roads, distance from population centers are influential by different weights to find it. moreover, one of the main requirements of development everywhere is planning and zonation is an appropriate way of proper site selection. The current study is an applied research, and is analytical descriptive in nature. In order to determine and rating the required zonation criteria in the area, 25 experts and officials in the field of ecotourism were interviewed. The results indicate that in the ecotourism zonation of the area, 3 criteria of ecotourism values, natural conditions and infrastructure and facilities, play an important role. according to expert's opinions, among three criteria, ecotourism values with a final score of 0.662 is the highest rating, the second one with a score of 0.247 is natural conditions and ultimately infrastructures with critical value of 0.131 has the lowest score.Consequently, the most appropriate area for ecotourism in this area is located in south and a small part of East and Centre of the region. The second zone is less important than the previous one and is located in the eastern part of the region. The third priority area for ecotourism has little value compared to the previous zones and includes more and farmland and lakes and is more faced with the risk of floods.