Assessment of Tourism Climate Opportunities and Threats for Villages Located in the Northern Coasts of Iran

Abstract

Identifying environmental potentials has a crucial role in the construction and spatial planning of our country, especially in the countryside. This article attempts to examine the climate characteristics of the tourism villages located at the northern coast of Iran, which is the south of Caspian Sea, in order to expand and develop the tourism industry. In this study, for the first time, terms of climate comfort and climate tourism in 6 tourism villages of 3 provinces of Golestan, Gilan, and Mazandaran were analyzed through physiologically equivalent temperature (PET) and climate-tourism-information-scheme (CTIS) by using data from 1994-2014. Results from PET showed that among the 6 studied villages in Mazandaran, Kandolus and Javaher Deh had the most days of thermal comfort with values of 51.6% and 51%, respectively in the entire period of the study while the least thermal comfort was 35.3% which belonged to Zeyarat in Golestan. The results also showed that based on PET, late fall to mid-winter held the maximum climate comfort conditions observed in the villages of the 3 provinces. Furthermore, it was found that the most important climate comfort deterrent factor in villages of Gilan and Golestan was hot class and for Mazandaran, bioclimatic warmth. However, based on CTIS, windy, foggy, and cold stress were not known as comfort limiting factors in the entire study area. Sultry and heat stress were introduced as tourism limiting factors in the summer and spring. On the other hand, the maximum comfort was in the autumn based on thermal comfort.