PRIORITIZING BIODIVERSITY THREATS IN IRAN PROTECTED AREAS USING TOPSIS METHOD

Due to increasing human threats and pressures especially in developing countries and also increasing human concerns about loss of biodiversity, it is essential to prioritize biodiversity threats to be used before applying conservation and management plans. The present study is aimed to identify and prioritize biodiversity threat criteria in Iran protected areas. Firstly, after investigating different studies, some threats to biodiversity have been identified. Afterwards, weighted importance indices have been defined using Entropy method and were used in standard weighted matrix in TOPSIS method for prioritizing biodiversity threat criteria in Iran protected areas. Weighted indices with Entropy method indicate that incidence impact event time or moment is the most important index and indices of impact intensity, direction and probability of occurrence are less important. The result of TOPSIS method prioritization showed oil resources with shortest distance from negative ideal solution and the greatest distance from ideal positive solution, while chemical resources, refineries, highways, freeways, and transit roads have the highest priority, respectively human non-formal settlements, Byway or detours density and deep wells drilling represent the lowest priority.Consequently, this method helped make suitable indicators for sustainable development of conservation in Iran protected areas.The result indicates the efficiency of the proposed model in meeting the research objectives and it is considered as an innovation in the field of biodiversity- land use planning.