The Tourism Potential of Protected Area by Using GIS (Case study: Ghamishloo Wildlife Refuge)

Extended abstract
1- Introduction
The specific aim of this paper is application of GIS and preliminary evaluation results for development of ecotourism in Ghamishloo wildlife refuge in Isfahan province of Iran. Iran and like many other countries has officially recognized the importance, necessity and the role of wildlife refuges for education, research, science development, and tourism. Furthermore these refuges have become very important for the protection and preservation of environment at national and international level. The wildlife refuges with varied natural resources and spatial arrangements contribute to the diversity in the natural environment. 
 
The search on recreational potential in ecotourism supports the improvement of the economic and social standard of the native population in a region and helps to preserve the recreational areas.
 
2- Methodology
The key strategies in searching for areas with potential ecotourism capacity, to attract regional and national tourists are:
1)        Zoning for visitors’ usage
2)        Designing and planning the ecotourism location
3)        Creating stable infrastructure design
4)        Management and monitoring the impact
5)        Logical leadership of in natural friendliness
Geographical Information System (GIS) provides a comprehensive tool for implementing the key strategic of evaluating land to use potential ecotourism capacity. GIS technology and tools, facilitate processing information, spatial statistical analysis, and mapping for assessing. In this study, GIS was complemented with SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunity and threats) for the strategic planning and evaluation of local areas for their ecotourism capacity.  We drew on databases for wildlife habitat, vegetation cover, soil, and distance to historical locations, water resources, roads, and scenic beauties in the landscape. An analytical hierarchy process (AHP) to assign weights to the criteria was applied. First was created a hierarchical structure in which the goals, standards, choices and the relation between the factors were identified. The next step included the calculation of the weights. Finally has been calculated the scores and measured the e logical consistency of the final decisions.
 
3- Discussion and Conclusion
The GIS and SWOT analysis for Ghamishloo wildlife refuge showed that the historical places layer has the most weight with a suitability rate is 0.07% .
The existing of quantitative information in tourism field in different developing countries makes it possible for the specialists to identify the level of underdevelopment of the existing facilities. There are also strong indications for investment in ecotourism which contributes to develop. The GIS could help collect, save, analyze and encode the given the information and support decision makers through powerful analysis. Utilization of the satellite images is one of the major sources of data for GIS. Through this well developed technology and inexpensive access to the data can support monitoring the ecotourism dedicated areas