Identification of suitable locations for potential ecotourism in Nagapattinam district, South-Eastern coastal India

Ecotourism is expressed as when tourists are attracted to a given geographic area (i.e. space) which has its own available natural, environmental and socioeconomic resources. The main objective of the present study is to identify potential ecotourism sites in Nagapattinamdistrict. Based on the previous literature it is identified five ecotourism parameters like land use land cover map, elevation, slope, road network and river. Those identified factor maps first ranked based on expert opinion, and then the weight of influence ofeach factor was computed by pair-wise comparison technique which is one of AHP method. The final ecotourism potential sites model map was created based on the linear combination of factors with their respective weights in ArcGIS overlay extension and presented using FAÒs suitability scheme into fiveclasses. The result showed that 21% is highly suitable and lies to the eastern part of the study area. Generally,major suitable and moderately suitable area accounts for 75.6 % and marginally suitable area for 13.5 % and the not suitable area is 0.06 %. Therefore, this study shows that the district has high ecotourism potential which can contribute to the livelihood of the community through sustainable environmental development and protection.