Geodiversity Assessment as a First Step in Designating Areas of Geotourism Potential. Case Study: Western Carpathians

Abstract

Geodiversity is the natural diversity of features of geological structure, relief, and soil cover, including the relationships between these features, their properties, and their impact on other elements of the natural and cultural environment. It is described and analyzed using various types of quantitative, qualitative, or quantitative–qualitative methods. The concept of a geodiversity map presented in this article belongs to the third of these groups of methods. Despite the use of optimization methods in the form of a hexagon grid or the analytic hierarchy process calculator, it still remains partially subjective. The use of this method to calculate the geodiversity of an entire province (the Western Carpathians) gives a general view of the natural diversity of this area and allows regions to be selected for more detailed analyses or comparisons to be made between them. The geodiversity map is also a very good background on which to illustrate geotourist potential, which is expressed in terms of the number and distribution of geosites. However, in the case of the Western Carpathians, these two variables do not correlate with each other.

Geoeducational assessments in Khon Kaen National Geopark, Thailand: implication for geoconservation and geotourism development

“…As per the geodiversity theory of Gray (2013) , the inventories and characterisation of the KKGp can be classified through fossils, landforms, landscapes, rocks, and minerals. The classification methods ( Ruban, 2010 ; Neches, 2016 ; Ponjiger et al., 2021 ; Pal and Albert, 2021 ; Ferrando et al., 2021 ; Dias et al., 2021 ; de Paula Silva et al., 2021 ; Chrobak et al., 2021 ; Scammacca et al., 2022 ; Carrion-Mero et al., 2022 ) suggest that these geosites have potential as paleontological, geomorphological, stratigraphical, petrological, and mineralogical sites.…”

Towards Transferable Use of Terrain Ruggedness Component in the Geodiversity Index

“…Moreover, when using hexagons, the distance between the centers of the neighboring blocks is always the same, and the effect of their border is the smallest among the different geometric shapes [64]. Such block form has already been used in geodiversity assessment [65], since the variations of the distances between the blocks edges and their centers are smaller than with square blocks or equilateral triangles [66]. From the conservation planning point of view, the usage of hexagons results in less fragmented and more efficient portfolios in comparison to rectangular units [67].…”

Geodiversity Assessment by Application of Geoinformation Approach (on the Example of Golo Bardo Mountain, Western Bulgaria)

“…The quantitative approach is characterized by less expressed subjectivity of the assessment, but requires the processing of a significant amount of digital information (graphic and attributive), the application of mathematical and statistical methods. In this relation geographic information systems (GIS) provide gereat opportunity (Santos et al, 2017;Soms, 2017;Ferrando et al, 2021;Chrobak et al, 2021). On the other hand, the results of this approach depend on the choice of the components of the evaluation and the method of classification, which are determined by the researcher/expert performing the evaluation.…”

“…The review of the publication about assessment of geodiversity shows that mainly four components have been taken into evaluation: geological, geomorphological, hydrological and pedological (Ilić et al, 2016, Zwoliński et al, 2016, Ferrando et al, 2021. Some of the authors also consider land use / land cover (Pătroescu & Niculae, 2010;Chrobak et al, 2021;Ferrando et al, 2021). There are differences in the approach of determining the particular units for calculating the geodiversity index but the most often used is the grid method.…”

“…The size of the grid is different and depends on the scale of the map and the size of the area of interest. In order to minimize the subjectivity of assessment, analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is applied (Chrobak et al 2021;Ferrando et al, 2021). Despite the fact that determining the weights of the different components of geodiversity is arguable and depends on the experience and the view of the researcher, application of AHP gives reliable results, taking into account the interrelations between abiotic components.…”