Abstract:
Ecotourism is one of the fastest growing sectors in the tourism industry now adays. It is also a
distinctive kind of the tourism that focuses to maintain unique natural and cultural resources,
generate income for local communities and serves as an educational research center. Like other
developing countries, Ethiopia is not effectively using its rich and endemic wildlife species for
ecotourism due to various physical and socioeconomic factors. Masha district has also abundant
and valuable natural and cultural resources that can be developed into ecotourism, but the district
was not used its attractive resources for ecotourism. The current study was initiated to select
potential sites for ecotourism using GIS and RS as a decision support tool in Masha district,
southwest Ethiopia. To identify a suitable site for ecotourism, this study employed GIS based
Multi-Criteria Evaluation method because it was a commonly used technique in suitable site
selection. To achieve the objective of this study, about seven physical and socioeconomic
parameters were selected through literature review. Then weights for each factor were assigned
based on Analytical Hierarchy Process using pairwise comparison matrices. After assigning
weights, all evaluation criteria were integrated in a GIS software to map out potential ecotourism
suitable site. Based on the overlay result a thematic map of potential ecotourism sites was
produced. The final results reveal that, about 21.2% of the study area was classified as highly
suitable potential ecotourism sites (S1) whereas about 59% and 19.5% of the district were under
moderately (S2) and marginally suitable (S3) classes. But, only the small portion of the district
(0.4%) was considered as not currently suitable site (N) for ecotourism. These largest parts of the
highly suitable potential ecotourism sites were lies in the central, northern, northwestern, southern
and southwestern part of the district. Therefore, decision makers should give a due attention to
advertise the selected suitable site for both local and foreign tourists in order to develop the
district as one of ecotourism destination areas in the country.
