ECOLOGICAL CAPABILITY EVALUATION FOR AQUACULTURE ACTIVITIES BY GIS

Geographic Information System (GIS) is the best suitable system for land evaluation. In this research, at the first step, the Makhdoum's model is introduced ‚ and then Hamadan Province, from aquaculture point of view and capabilities of the lands to fulfill aquaculture activities is evaluated. GIS was used for the mentioned purposes. The software used was Arc View (version 3.2 a), with the UTM projection. For evaluation, Mc Hark method of Maps overlaying was utilized. According to the results, the suitable surface area for aquaculture activities was introduced, which was equal to 13.1 percent of Hamadan Province. According to the evaluations, this province has limited potentials for aquaculture activities. Therefore, it is necessary to pay attention to these limitations in development plans. Key words: GIS, environmental evaluation, aquaculture, Hameda