Assessing and zoning the potential of areas prone to developing water recreation by combining AHP ,TOPSIS and GIS in water resources of Dorud city

Today, tourism is considered as one of the most important activities in the world, and it has high potential in generating foreign currency incomes and creating jobs. According to the definition, ecotourism is a responsibly journey to natural areas that protect the environment and improve the lives of local people. Despite having the necessary potential in tourism in Iran, it has not succeeded in attracting tourists. The first step towards achieving tourism development in the country is identifying, assessing, and introducing the existent potentials and capabilities to provide development opportunities with comprehensive knowledge and planning. Dorud is one of the unparalleled regions in Lorestan province due to the availability of sufficient water resources that can be a good place for water resource recreation. Unfortunately, despite these tourist attractions, there has not yet been an organized approach to land use planning that takes into account these natural talents of the region for water tourism. According to the mentioned issues, the present study intends to use a multi-criteria evaluation to identify and zonate suitable areas of water tourism, and its purpose is to properly plan the tourism with environmental considerations and prioritize these areas in the Dorud city.

Dorud is situated in Lorestan Province. It is located between latitudes 33°16'-33°44'N and longitudes 48°47'-49°19'. In this study, by investigating the factors influencing the zoning of tourism-prone areas, Dorud region has been zoned based on multi-criteria evaluation model. Multi-criteria evaluation is a structured process for defining goals, formulating criteria, evaluating, and solving decision problems. In this study, the criteria was detemined based on the criteria of the ecotourism national document, the criteria of the ecological potential assessment, and the ecotourism criteria in the protected areas. After the preparation of the criteria maps, it is necessary to standardize the maps that have different ranges and scales. In this research, Fuzzy and Boolean methods were used to standard the scales. In order to fuzzy the criteria maps, the pixels are ranked based on the membership degree in the fuzzy range from 0 to 255, and high degree of membership indicate more desirability of pixels for tourism. In the Boolean method, zero values are inappropriate areas, and values of one indicate suitable areas for development. In order to weigh the criteria, the pairwise comparison method was used in the form of analytical hierarchy process (AHP), and then the maps were combined using the weighted linear combination method. Then, in order to prepare the final suitable map, it is necessary to extract the zones, which have 70% suitability and have more than 5 hectares. Finally, suitable zones for recreation prioritized by TOPSIS model.

In this research, the effective environmental criteria were considered as informational layers in water recreation zoning. Criteria were taken with two views: one for water recreation in lotic water resources, and the other on flowing water resources. The effective environmental criteria in water recreation zoning classified in 5 criterion groups involved physical, ecological, fundamental, safety, and social-economic and 27 sub criterion for water recreation in Lotic water resources, and 26 sub criterion for water recreation in lentic water resources. At this step, due to the difference in the type of tourism recreation in lotic and flowing water resources, two types of utility maps for the flowing water resources (waterfall and rivers) and the latic water recources (mineral fountain, dam, water reservoirs, sarab, lakes and wetlands) were prepared. Then, in order to zoning the area, the final raster layer was classified into four categories based on the suitability of the land. Thus, the first categort with high potential (the suitability of more than 150), the second category with the average potential (the suitability of 110 to 150), the third category with the weak potential (the suitability of 50 to 110), and the forth category without suitability (0 to 50) were considered. In the next step, the first category was considered as the best class for the water recreation, and extracted from the suitable map. Based on the performed classification, 8.47% of the area has high potential for recreation in flowing water resources, and 10.28% of the area has high potential for recreation in latic water resources. Finally, six suitable zones in each of the recreations were selected, and tourism zones were prioritized according to the TOPSIS method.

The results of criteria weighting for latic water resources showed that distance from lake, wetland, sarab, dam and water reservoirs are the most important criteria in suitable recreation areas. In addition, the results of the combination of AHP and TOPSIS in water resources showed that the slope and depth with a weight of 0.182 and, 0.173, respectively are the most important indicators in this model, respectively. Consequently, results showed that Merok dam, Mahi hamyane Sarab and pond, Heshamatabad 2 pond zones respectively have highest preferences for water recreation in lotic water resources. In relation to the tourism recreation in flowing water resources, weighting criteria shows that distance from the river, slope and height are the most important. In addition, the results of the AHP and TOPSIS combination in flowing water resources show that the slope, water speed, and water volume with a weight of 0.191, 0.171, and 0.140 are three important indicators in this model, respectively. As a result, Sezar River, Gaharrood 1 and Gaharrood 2 have highest preferences for water recreation flowing water resources. The proposed zones in this research were determined based on ecological and socio-economic criteria that indicate the high capability of the zones for this type of recreation. Of course, in order to implement tourism goals, further studies are needed in areas such as determining the ecological capacity of the region, soil erodibility and so on.