Soil moisture plays a key role in the ecological capability of arid and semi-arid woodland. Reducing soil moisture due to frequent droughts causes pest prevalence and disease outbreak and the consequence of forest dieback. On the other hand, soil moisture is strongly correlated with the amount of radiation received on the Earth’s surface. The sun’s radiation is traditionally described often by aspect and sometimes by toposhape. The use of the hillshade map for estimating solar radiation is possible through developing GIS. The present study aimed to compare the relationship and the ability of these indices to describe the phenomenon of arid and semi-arid woodland decline better and more accurately in a case study in the west of Iran. To this aim, the aspect and toposhape layers were generated in 5 and 12 classes, respectively. Then, the hillshade map in range of 0-255 was made during the peak of summer heat. The comparison of the dieback ratio in the three characteristic histograms showed that the shade index, unlike the other two indicators, had a significant effect on forest drought (R2=0.91 for linear equation and R2=0.94 for quadratic equation). The results indicated that the application of hillshade in describing and analysing ecological processes by relying on soil moisture such as woodland dieback is superior to the other two indicators. It is suggested that this index be used to obtain a risk model to predict woodlands dieback which are under the pressure of frequent droughts due to climate change or other mortal factors.
The continuous increase of tourism destinations and the volume of investments on this has made the tourism industry a key driver of the progress of the countries' economy (UNWTO, 2017). The optimal evaluation of tourism is always an important challenge for managers and its consideration in the planning of multiple uses of forest areas has a double importance in terms of the sustainability of these ecosystems. The evolution of the early studies of the status quo (existent) situation of the land (in terms of inventory and demand) has changed to explore the possible capability of tourism in terms of tourism resources or capability (Iatu, 2010). There are two main trends in describing tourism potential. Glavan, defines it as "the sum of possibilities that the natural and social environment puts at disposal of tourism activities" (Glavan, 2000). On the contrary, (Muntele & Iatu, 2006) considered it the "set of objective and subjective conditions", and other similar definitions, their main approach focusing on its immaterial nature of the assessment of tourism capability. The immaterial approaches emphasize that tourism capability is a prerequisite and a reliable precondition for the possible occurrence of tourism activity in a particular region (Iatu, 2010). Since the mid-1990s, there are more sophisticated geo-cultural approaches in the tourism assessment based on the ability of natural or human elements in the form of surveys of social mentality (tourist interests) (O'Riordan, 1971). Attractiveness is an important tool for measuring the tourism system. The approaches to evaluate the attractiveness of tourism was developed by Smith (Smith, 1987). This approach provides a better description of the relationship between the possible and the actual status of tourism (existent) and between the Supply and the Consumed (Boyd et al., 1995). Important research resources have been reported in assessing tourism capability based on the potential of attractiveness (
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.