Evaluation of Land Capability for Geo Tourism Development in a Protected Area Case study: Protected Area of Manesht, Bankol and Galarang in Ilam Province

Tourism is an industry that nowadays considered by many governments and currently is one of the most profitable sectors of the global economy. The tourism industry has a significant impact on employment rates, national income, consumption and investment. Depending on the purpose of the tourist, tourism is classified into various types, one of them is geotourism Although geo tourism now has allocated a small part of the total tourism to itself , but at the present, this part of tourism industry has a very high growth rate. In this paper by using the Geographic Information System (GIS), identifying areas prone to geo tourism in the protected area of Manesht, Bankol and Galarang using the Boolean logic model and AHP model have been investigated. For this purpose, information layers including maps of geomorphic, geological, topographic, gradient zoning, vegetation, mineral springs, communication paths, water resources and map of welfare and residential accommodations were prepared. Applying the appropriate weights was done in the Expert choice software environment. Then through combining and overlapping information layers in Arc GIS10.2 environment, suitable areas were identified and top priorities to the development of geo tourism in the area were introduced. The results of this study show that the areas with high attraction are located in the north, center to south-east of the protected area, which have vegetation and forest cover, water resources and high geomorphologic values, and areas with lower attraction are located more in the south and west area, which have evaluated as poor in terms of for geomorphologic values, vegetation and forest cover, access and infrastructure, water resources and natural attractions. The results of this research show that the two models of AHP and Boolean's logical model are highly adaptive in assessing geotourism in the studied region and can be suitable for assessing geo tourism in different regions. Also, the correct introduction of these natural attractions to the tourists, will positively affect on the natural environment of the tourists and improve the attraction of tourism.