Indian Journal of Science and Technology

Abstract

Zoning is a basic step to separate protected areas for planning and sustainable management purposes of a region. The objective of this study was to obtain potential zones in Boujagh national park within an area of 3266 ha, in Guilan province, Iran, by using grid method. For this purpose, after recognizing ecological, social and economic resources, data analysis was performed with grid method in Geographic Information System (GIS) feature in a 1/25000 scale. The gridding of studied area was conducted by using satellite image of IRS 2007 and Arc GIS 9.3 software. A number of 160 grid cells and 40 micro grids were recognized in the studied park and the data of each grid cell was imported in cell characteristics table, using GIS. According to ecological characteristics of Boujagh national park and based on the classification for the parameters, some specific ecological models were designed. Also, ecological capability evaluation of area was performed by several agent techniques for different zones. After recognizing and organizing of zones, zoning map of the studied national park was created. The results indicated that in coastal marine Boujagh national park, the strict nature, protected, extensive use, intensive use, recovery, administrative, scientific use and multiple use zones are consisted of 21.85, 56.05, 3.35, 6.09, 0.82, 0.05, 1.64 and 10.16 percents of the total studied area, respectively.

Keywords: Ecological Capability Evaluation, Geographic Information System (GIS), Grid Method, Spatial Ecological Models