Locating suitable areas for mangrove afforestation in the Sirik habitat, Hormozgan Province

Nowadays finding of ecologically suitable place or places for any activity, is one of the most important steps in the plan implementation. Roughly 94% of the net area of mangrove habitats in Iran is located in Hormozgan province which is the only place in south coast of the country that two species of mangrove trees grow naturally. In recent decades, biological reclamation and reforestation of mangrove species (grey mangrove and loop-root or red mangrove) was one of the most important projects in the natural resources management department of the province. The purpose of this study was to locate suitable areas for biological reclamation and reforestation of mangrove species using GIS and is based on ecological criteria. In this regard, after identifying variables influencing on the establishment of the species from the point of view of experts, 10 variables were selected and used. Assessment and classification of environmental parameters affecting the biological regeneration of mangrove forests using the Delphi method and fuzzy evaluation was performed according to the Kriging method because of the lower prediction error. Among the different fuzzy operators such as ::::union::::, intersection, addition, multiplication and algebraic gamma phase in the end, the addition operator provided the best adapted results to identify suitable areas for reforestation and biological restoration projects with higher success rates.