Multicriteria potential mapping for Mangrove ecotourism in Batu Ampar, West Kalimantan

Mangrove ecosystems provide a wide variety of vital ecological and economic ecosystem services to coastal communities, including ecotourism. Batu Ampar, where one of the most extensive mangrove forests lies, is encouraged to develop mangrove ecotourism. This study aims to determine the priority for ecotourism development in Batu Ampar districts by using the potential map based on the multiple aspects from tourism, environment, legal, and landscape value. This research’s multicriteria use includes Natural Tourism Attraction, Mangrove Tourism Suitability, Biophysics Vulnerability, Landscape Values, and Spatial Policy, and weighted overlay based on Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) score. The results indicate that by using multicriteria for the mangrove ecotourism potential, 18% is the high potential area, 30% is moderate potential, 22.6%, and the rest are not potential. The high potential area should become the priority of ecotourism development in Batu Ampar, situated in five villages: Batu Ampar, Telok Nibong, Nipah Panjang, Tanjung Harapan, and Sungai Kerawang.


Introduction
Mangrove ecosystems provide ecological benefits, as nutrition supplier, a place for spawning and foraging for aquatic biotas, protecting shorelines from erosion, providing nurseries for many species of fish and crustaceans, preventing intrusion of seawater and strong winds, and blocking sea waves, as well as an economic benefit, among others, as a provider of various timber forest products and ecosystem services, and providing a place for mangrove nursery areas [1][2][3]. The mangrove ecosystem in the ecological landscape structure is in the ecotone area, an intermediate area between two different ecosystems. It has high biodiversity due to the combination of the two ecosystems and has a very high vulnerability.
Indonesia, as a tropical archipelago, has the largest area of mangrove forests in the world, with a total area of 4.25 x 10 4 km 2 (26% of world total), followed by Brazil (1.34 x 10 4 km 2 ), Nigeria (1.05 x 10 4 km 2 ) and Australia (1.00 x 10 4 km 2 ) [4]. One of the largest is the Batu Ampar Mangrove Biosphere, located in West Kalimantan, with a total area of 655.85 km 2 . Batu Ampar mangrove forest has been claimed as one of the most extensive mangrove forests in Asia and has the most comprehensive mangrove species in the world.
Batu Ampar district is located in Kubu Raya Regency. This regency has claimed that mangrove is their identity, especially one particular species of mangrove name Kandelia candel. The local government concern with the ecotourism development in this area to support tourism. Unfortunately, these potentials have not affected the local community's social economy, and existing tourism has consistently not attracted tourists. Ecologically, the mangrove protected forest in Batu Ampar is good. Still, however, its sustainability is considered insufficient from the social and economic aspects [5]. An area is designated as a conservation area to provide three dimensions of benefits: ecological benefits, economic benefits, and social benefits.
Ecotourism is one of the activities in the Batu Ampar mangrove area. Ecotourism has been believed to encourage regional and local economic growth for the improvement of community welfare and preserve the natural resources and biodiversity as tourist objects and attractions. Quality ecotourism in the mangrove area of Batu Ampar has the potential to be sustainable tourism by maintaining the quality of objects and natural attractions. Also, its activities can impact community life values, such as providing income, welfare, and social life of local peoples. Spatial assessment is needed to study this large area properly, and integrated with multiple factors for sustainability, including ecological aspects, policy aspects, to social and economic aspects, otherwise a sustainable tourism will not be adequately actualized.
The mangrove ecosystem in Batu Ampar well distribute almost in every village in Batu Ampar, and every village is encouraged to develop ecotourism in their area. An assessment of mangroves' potential needs to be carried out, especially in the protected forest area of Batu Ampar, West Kalimantan, to determine the priority of ecotourism areas developed with a spatial approach. The primary purpose of this research is to model the potential map of mangrove ecotourism with an appropriate combination of multiple aspects from tourism, environment, legal, and landscape value. The appropriate combination is obtained by assign the weight calculated from Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) methods.  The field survey was carried during August 2019 to collect primary and secondary data and carry out the questioner including the interview towards the local people and stakeholders such as local government and NGOs. The datasets used in this research include the SRTM-DEM for elevation and slope map, Indonesia's geospatial portal, and Identification and mapping of mangrove ecotourism parameters in this study consist of multiple criteria from the four main aspects: mangrove ecotourism, biophysics vulnerability, legal aspects, and local people value, see Table 1. The criteria used in this study are as follows: 1) Natural Tourism Attraction [6] and Mangrove Tourism Suitability [7] for tourism aspects, 2) Mangrove Biophysical Vulnerability Index [8] for vulnerability aspects, 3) Landscape Value [9], for local people perceptions, and 4) Village Forest and Consensus Forest Use for the policy aspects.

Methods
Potential maps are generated by using weighted overlay analysis towards those multiple criteria. The weight score assigned to each map of the criteria are obtained by using the AHP methods [10] from the selected expert respondent, with Consistency Ratio (CR) = 2.3%, and principal eigenvalue = 4.062, see Table 1.

Ecotourism Aspects
Natural Tourism Attraction criteria are widely used for the ecotourism potential assessment, especially in Indonesia. Although these criteria have been handy and cover multiple ecosystems such as coastal areas and mountain areas, it still requires some adjustment and modification, particularly for this study on the mangrove ecosystem. Therefore, for ecotourism aspects is also used other criteria for Mangrove Tourism Suitability [7]. Contrary to the Natural Tourism Attraction criteria, this Mangrove Tourism index is specifically focused on the mangrove as the attraction. The combination of these two criteria expected to represent most of the tourism aspects.

Mangrove Tourism Suitability
For Mangrove Tourism Suitability, there are three parameters, mangrove density, number of mangrove species, and the number of biotas (Figure 2a, 2b, 2c). Based on these criteria, the area with mangrove covers has high suitability, although some of the mangrove covers moderate suitability (Figure 2d). Mangrove density maps were generated from NDVI, and only High, Moderate, and Low Density include in the calculation. Non-vegetation and Over High-Density mangrove areas are considered not suitable for ecotourism.

Mangrove Biophysical Vulnerability Index
Despite their high potential for ecotourism, mangroves have a very high risk of destruction and very vulnerable to changes, moreover to climate changes [13,14]. Therefore, it's essential to identify areas of mangrove that are prone to damage and vulnerable. The ecotourism activities will not disturb the vulnerable ecosystems and, alternatively, manage to conserve the high vulnerability areas.
Identification of the mangrove vulnerability in this research is divided into two effects, Inundation and Erosion (see Figure 3d & 3e), each consist of three parameters Elevation, Geology, and Vegetation [15] (see Figure 3a, 3b, and 3c). The map for these aspects is generated from multispectral satellite images (vegetation) using the decision trees classification for Marsh [16], Water Vegetation, and Mangrove [1] from various spectral indices, including NDVI (low tide), NDWI, NDMI (high tide), NDBI. Different from other aspects, high vulnerability indicates that not suitable for ecotourism and vice versa. Overall results (Figure 3f) shows that the mangrove area in Batu Ampar has a Low Vulnerability index.

Landscape Value
A total of 20 respondents from local people were asked to share their perceptions and preferences of the landscape in their environment. In this case, are divided into five classes: mangroves, settlement, agriculture, water bodies, and forest. This approach is  [9] since we exclude the photograph that represents the landscape considering the respondent are local people and understand well about these landscapes. Each data was calculated and imported into the land use map with the same five land use classes.

Figure 4 Landscape Value by Local People
The results show that local people highly value the water bodies as part of their sociocultural and economy. It suited well with the local people as the coastal community who depends their lives on the coastal natural resources, see Figure 4, in this case, not only the sea and the rivers, but also to the mangroves forest. Local people also highly value the mangroves for the aesthetics. On the other hand, it is important to encourage their value on the environmental aspects to avoid the overuse of the mangroves areas as one reason for the declining quality of the coastal environment [17].

Spatial Policy for Ecotourism
One of the best approaches to studying the potential and impact of ecotourism in the policy aspects is examining it according to the spatial scales at which ecotourism and policies are situated [18]. In this research, we focus on the study area's spatial policies that considerably influence most of the sites' activities.

Figure 5 Legal Aspects
The Village Forest's management right includes the Forest Management Group's right to use the area to collect non-timber forest products and environmental services, such as ecotourism. Hence, the Village Forest Area score is the highest. Following that, two forest types from the Consensus Forest Use, the Protected Forest and Other Usage, are possible for ecotourism area but require plenty of permit and approval. On the other hand, the production forest is not supposed for ecotourism, but if the company decided to establish ecotourism, it also require a permit and approval ( Figure 5).

Mangrove Ecotourism Potential Map
Overall, based on the weighted overlay from four aspects in this research, the results show that the study area is potential for mangrove ecotourism, where 414.67 km 2 (18%) with High Potential area, 697.28 km 2 (30%) Moderate Potential, 522.39 km 2 (22.6%), and the rest 672.33 km 2 (29%) are Not Potential area, from total area 2,306.57 km 2 of Batu Ampar District. High Potential areas for mangrove ecotourism are situated in Batu Ampar, Telok Nibong, Nipah Panjang, Tanjung Harapan, and Sungai Kerawang (Figure 6). Most of the village in Batu Ampar district has areas that moderately potential mangrove ecotourism.
Comparing the results for mapping the mangrove ecotourism using only Mangrove Ecotourism Sustainability (Figure 2) with the multicriteria results (Figure 6), it is clear that the results are less detailed if using only the mangrove ecotourism sustainability. The mangrove ecotourism sustainability underestimated the area with moderate potential for ecotourism, and this research method manages to delineate the moderately potential area. These results might be beneficial information for the area that has the moderate potential area of ecotourism.