Prioritizing Potentially Appropriate Areas for Building Geo-parks in Lorestan Province
Subject Areas :
Keywords: Geotourism, Gahar Lake, geo-park, Loresta,
Abstract :
Lorestan province as the capital of geo-tourism in Iran includes a wide variety of unique geomorphological features such as caves, waterfalls, lakes and replete with historical and geological potentials together with optimal and appropriate areas for constructing geo-parks. One of the objectives of this applied-developmental research was identifying and introducing geo-tourism attractions, prioritizing required criteria and sub-criteria and also identifying optimized areas for creating geo-parks in Lorestan. Therefore descriptive-analytical methods together with field studies and the comments from experts and specialists and also an AHP model were used to investigate the effective and optimized criteria and sub-criteria for constructing geo-parks. Using a questionnaire, the researchers detected an optimized area in the province of Lorestan for constructing a geo-park. The results of the study showed that the most important criterion in prioritizing areas to construct geo-parks in Lorestan province was economical and infrastructure related criteria. Reviewing and prioritizing criteria and sub-criteria for the five proposed areas for constructing geo-parks showed that despite the great geo capabilities, there was a possibility to construct geo-parks in several areas, however the most gifted area for creating a geo-park was Gohar Lake and its surrounding area.