Site suitability analysis for Ecotourism potential using Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and GIS in Chamoli district, Uttarakhand

Abstract

With the ever-increasing need to manage and conserve the ecosystem, as well as the growing business potential for tourism, it is becoming increasingly important to address and align these two domains. Ecotourism enters the scene to provide a solution for anthropogenic interruptions at ecological tourist sites, with its potential to provide sustainable maintenance and development of both the environment and the local communities closely related with natural ecosystems. Tourism is one of the most valuable industries in India and the world, accounting for a considerable portion of most countries' economies. Chamoli is one of the tourist hotspots districts in India. Along with being an ecologically rich zone residing in the Himalayas, it possesses some of the highest peaks and national parks like Nanda Devi and valley of flowers. The study area is also prone to various natural disasters like floods, earthquakes, landslides, and the recent one being the rishi-ganga landslide of February 2021. The use of GIS tools in conjunction with AHP allows for a more streamlined and holistic approach to making scientifically calculated conclusions. We attempted to establish the prospective zones of ecotourism sites in our study region by considering a variety of factors that influence those sites of sustainable zones, such as slope, topographic roughness, elevation, road closeness, river proximity, and proximity to a protected area.  The study area's data and information were geospatially analysed to build an ecotourism potential map that can be used as a guide for planning sustainable resource management and development operations in the Chamoli district. Keywords: - Ecotourism (ET), Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), Site-Suitability, Chamoli.