GIS-based ecotourism potentiality mapping in the East Hararghe Zone, Ethiopia

The East Hararghe Zone (EHZ) is one of the eastern Ethiopian zones most endowed with diverse landscapes and abundant resources to promote and use for ecotourism development. Potential ecotourism sites have, however, hardly ever been explored so far. The objective of this study was to model and identify potential ecotourism sites by combining Geographic Information System (GIS)-based Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) and Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) methods. Six criteria, including landscape and naturalness, wildlife, topography, accessibility, geology, and climate, were established based on experts' preferences and literature, and the thematic factors for suitability modeling were derived from freely accessible satellite imagery and existing geospatial data and combined using a weighted linear combination (WLC) method. The results reveal that about 26.19% were highly suitable, 35.34% were moderately suitable, 25.28% were marginally suitable, and 13.17% were not suitable. Most areas with high to marginal suitability were found in the southeast, southwest, and uplands in the northern part, while the southernmost extent had the highest proportion of areas unsuitable for ecotourism development. The area under the curve (AUC) assessment has verified the model's performance, resulting in an overall AUC of 74.96%. This suggests that a model-driven map is a reliable spatial support tool for sustainable ecotourism development in areas with diverse landscapes and resources.