Potential ecotourism site suitability evaluation for sustainable natural resource management in Kafta Sheraro National Park (KSNP), north-western Tigray, Ethiopia

ABSTRACT

Kafta Sheraro National Park is endowed with richest biodiversity and physical resources. These resources have a great potential contribution to the development of ecotourism. However, so far there have been no well-identified and mapped potential ecotourism sites. This study is aimed to identify potential ecotourism sites using a combination of Geographic Information System and Analysis Hierarchy Process method. In this paper, an integrated geospatial baseline data, such as biophysical features, wildlife, topography, climate, culture, and accessibility, were considered as main independent factors. Eleven criteria were designed based on 22 discussions with experts, as well as literatures, intensive field surveys, satellite imageries, and exiting thematic maps. The overall analysis result indicates that 27.63% of the area was highly suitable, 35.49% moderately suitable, 26.22% marginally suitable, and 10.66% not suitable. Most of the highly suitable areas lie in the western, north western, and some parts of the south eastern of the park. But, the moderately suitable areas are found in the central and southern parts of the park. Model area under the curve in the training data is 86.15%. Therefore, the output of this study can use as a basis for evaluating the suitability ecotourism development by governmental policy makers.

KEYWORDS:

• Ecotourism site suitability
• multi-criteria decision making (MCDM)
• AHP
• GIS
• Kafta Sheraro National Park

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the Tigray Agricultural Research Institute and Mekelle University NORAD project for providing us logistic and financial support, and Kafta Sheraro National Park head quarter for offering us to undertake our research work in the park. EWCA, EMA, and NMA for providing spatial data needed for this study, and staff from EWCA, KSNP, Setit Humera Zonal tourism, and agriculture office for their assistance in the data collection. We are also grateful to those experts who participated in the survey.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.