Capability Evaluation of Shimbar Protected Area for Establishment of Sustainable Tourism Using Multi Criteria Decision Making Method

Shimbar Protected Area, with an approximate area of 54000 ha, is located in northeastern Khuzestan Province, a district in Masjed Soleyman County. Tourist attractions in the region make it as one of the most promising areas for ecotourism development. In this regard, land capability evaluation is an appropriate tool to achieve the goals of tourism development. The present study was carried out to evaluate ecological capability of Shimbar Protected Area for tourism development using Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) method in Geographic Information System (GIS). For this, the most important criteria affecting ecotourism development in the protected area were identified using Delphi Questionnaire and expertise opinion. According to which, a total number of 7 main criteria and 14 sub-criteria were identified. In the next step, the main- and sub-criteria were compared pairwisely. The weight of each level of the hierarchy was judged using Expert Choice Software. Finally, the required map layers were weighted and all of the weighted criteria maps that had already been prepared in the scale of 1:250000 were converted from vector format into the raster to be overlaid in GIS. According to the results, slope was recognized as a key factor in ecological land capability evaluation of the study area. Processing data by GIS, the map of suitable, averagely suitable, and unsuitable zones for ecotourism development were prepared. The obtained results revealed that out of the entire study area, 5785 ha (11%) has a suitable capability, 39744 ha (73%) has a medium suitability and 168630 ha (16%) has a poor capability for ecotourism development.