Evaluation of landscape corridors within the scope of ecoturism planning: The case of Belemedik nature park- Kapikaya canyon

The structure and function of landscapes have changed intensively; It is seen that there are problems in landscape connections and there are many environmental problems. Research area; It has been determined according to the basin boundaries of Çakıt Stream and includes Belemedik Nature Park and Kapıkaya Canyon, where tourism potential is high. The aim of this thesis study; Ecological, socio-cultural and ecotourism potential evaluations, together with the existence of landscape corridors in the study area is to make a planning. Thesis; It includes the stages of determining the natural structure of the area, current land use and socio-economic characteristics, synthesis of the obtained data and revealing the ecotourism potential. A 'relevance analysis' was conducted by evaluating the digitized data, information on the field, and previous studies on this field. In addition to the suitability analysis, an evaluation was made with the 'entropy method'. As a result, in evaluating the ecotourism potential, "most suitable", "suitable", "less suitable" and "not suitable" categories were detected as large as 25,872.15, 39,473.46, 10,394.86, and 53.26 hectares, respectively. As a result of the aesthetic evaluation was done of Belemedik Nature Park and Kapıkaya Canyon with entropy metric. This analysis showed that the highest entropy value was 6,83 and the lowest entropy value was 1,90. The high level of recreation and aesthetics was highlighted as an important asset for ecotourism. Keywords: Ecotourism Potential, suitability analysis, entropy, landscape corridors