An Analysis of Suitable Areas for the Development of Ecotourism using the Integrated Model of FUZZY-AHP: A Case Study of Mahan Rural District

Nowadays, tourism in modern world has devoted itself to many areas in economic, cultural and social activities. Meanwhile, ecotourism is a rather new phenomenon in tourism industry introducing natural landscapes to tourists by maintaining their local identity. Iran has much capability of promoting ecotourism industry due to its great potential in terms of biodiversity. Mahan Rural District has a lot of potential owing to its natural heritage, diverse climatic features, monuments and cultural heritage and unique features in terms of ecotourism development. This paper attempts to analyze suitable areas for the development of ecotourism using integrated model of FUZZY-AHP. Our research method is descriptive-analytic in nature since various information factors including plant layering, isothermal lines, rainfall, roads, city, village, drainage, spring, waterfall, altitude and slope were provided allowing for the effective factors in recognizing suitable areas for ecotourism development, and were processed having been digitized in ArcGIS environment. Weight and relative importance of information layers towards each other were carried out through the hierarchical and analytical model of AHP. Then, 0.8 gamma operator was chosen as the best operator considering field studies and the knowledge of the area. The results of this study suggest that 25.43 percent of total Mahan area including Tigran heights, Shazdeh Graden, waterfall and springs of Sekonj village in the east, west and center of Mahan has a lot of potential for ecotourism activities. This means that those regions that have water sources and natural features like, spring, river, etc. and also good climatic conditions, have the highest potential for ecotourism activities in this rural district. Moreover, on the basis of the integration of information layers, 28.4 percent of Mahan area has very limited potential for ecotourism activities.