Geotourism

A prática do geoturismo tem-se disseminado e multiplicado, pela sua capacidade de promoção de um verdadeiro conhecimento dos valores da geodiversidade dos diferentes territórios, potenciando ainda o desenvolvimento de áreas dotadas de elevado e diversificado valor geomorfológico, geológico e demais elementos abióticos. Porém, esse desenvolvimento não tem sido realizado sem que ocorram impactos significativos sobre essa mesma geodiversidade e sobre as próprias comunidades locais. O presente trabalho tem como objetivo identificar e caracterizar os impactos do geoturismo na região de Terra Ronca, nomeadamente na principal caverna, também designada de Terra Ronca. Os procedimentos adotados consistiram na aplicação de um protocolo de avaliação rápida de impactos sobre os ambientes cavernícolas, complementado com entrevistas à população local e pessoas envolvidas na gestão das unidades de conservação e apoiado em revisão bibliográfica. Os resultados demonstraram que o geoturismo vem sendo desenvolvido de maneira desordenada, possibilitando a perda da geodiversidade local.

Due to the importance of geological features of Wadi El-Deesah, the area is well known for safari and camping adventurers from KSA and other GCC. With increasing tourism activities in this area, it has become important to set environmental landscape plan to satisfy the tourism needs and to sustain tourism attraction in the same time. Geographic information systems GIS facilitates the landscape planning process and is essential for suitability analysis of different land use and activities zones. Inspired by Ian McHarg's Layer Cake model, a geodatabase designed and developed to represent the natural and anthropogenic components of the area. The design of the geodatabase inspired by and it shows the hierarchy and the relationships of Wadi El-Deesah's landscape. Potential stakeholders' opinions were discussed and analyzed in order to recognize and understand the factors and constraints of geo-tourism in the area. These factors and constraints are the criteria that combined into a multi criteria suitability analysis model. The final product was mapping the location of highly sustainable and least environmental impacts for geo-tourism activities. Throughout the whole work, the level of understanding the relationships between geo-tourism, environment and man increased, and the researchers implemented useful concepts for sustainability in the GIS context. Keywords Geo-tourism-Multi Criteria Evaluation MCE – Suitability Analysis – Public Participatory GIS PPGIS – Landscape Planning 358

Preface: 
 
The valuation of ecosystem functions, goods and services of natural and cultural heritages and bioressources of many regions worldwide is still little known. The Mediterranean, Middle East region as well as the surrounding area are ecologically unique due to large differences in climatic, geographical, and geological features, which offer countries of these region weighty socio-economic potentials in terms of fertile agricultural lands, rich natural resources, and the existence of strategic resources such as crude oil and natural gas. Environmental degradation is one of the largest threats that are being looked at in the world today, and this specific region is no exception. Inappropriate and adverse human practices and activities such as disturbances land damage, different forms of pollutions, overpopulation, landfills, deforestation; combined with natural drivers are the main causes of land degradation and ecosystem destruction. The destruction of the environment ravages large parts of the planet, in particular heavily populated and/or exploited regions, and thus threatens the existence of all species, including ours. Furthermore, economic companies maximize their profits by ignoring environmental protection, while governments encourage investment rather than strict regulations. Under these challenging issues that hamper the social welfare and sustainable development, which depends on three pillars of sustainability: ‘Environment’, ‘Society’, and ‘Economy’, public environmental consciousness keeps increasing with the increase of major global problems such climate change. Nowadays people are interested to learn more about new advances in environmental research initiatives in view of the ever growing environmental degradation. However, if efforts of scholar ecologists and environmental activists are considered to have paid off socially, the state of the environment of our planet has not improved as looked-for.
 
This proceedings volume is based on the accepted papers for both oral and poster presentations during the 1st Springer Conference of the Arabian Journal of Geosciences (CAJG-1), Tunisia 2018. The book offers a broad range of new studies that discuss latest advances in geo-environmental sciences from diverse backgrounds including agroecology, climate change, environmental biotechnology, biodiversity, geotourim and geoarchaeology. It shares insights of experienced scholars from, but not limited to, research institutes in the Mediterranean and Middle East region on how the understanding of ecological processes is the key for improving practices in environment management and conservation. Main topics include: Environmental Assessment and Monitoring, Agroforestry Systems-Environment interactions, Environmental Impacts, Restoration Ecology, Investigations and Applications of Environmental Biotechnology, Spatiotemporal Patterns of Biodiversity, Paleobiology, and Socio-economics of Geotourism and Archaeology. With its diverse topics and new results, this volume enhances the understanding of environmental impacts and the state of restoration ecology in natural and agricultural habitats as it maximizes reader’s insights into emerging environmental issues and challenges. It provides new insights and practical information based on the latest data reconstructed from (i) various environmental assessments and monitorings of agrisilvicultural systems, (ii) applications of environmental biotechnology in plant breeding and plant-product valuation, (iii) spatiotemporal patterns of biodiversity and terrestrial paleobiodiversity, and (iv) socio-economic assessments of sustainable development involving geotourism and archaeological sites.

Hydrological heritage is a relatively new concept in the field of geosite assessment. The principal aim of this study is to apply M-GAM (Modified geosite assessment model) for comparative analysis of the Krupaja spring and the Žagubica (Mlava) spring, located in Homolje area, in Eastern Serbia. According to the classification of geosites of Institute for Nature Conservation of Serbia, these sites are on the list of protected sites (" hydro(geo)logical " heritage sites) of extraordinary national importance; however , they still have not gained necessary recognition in Serbia. Thus, their assessment according to different target groups should provide a clearer picture of their current condition. As M-GAM considers that not all indicators for evaluation of geosites are of the same importance, this paper applies two methods for comparing and determining the importance of indicators and subindicators in the model (Analytical-hierarchy process (AHP) and descriptive statistics conducted by SPSS). Also, it is assumed that different target groups will give different importance to some indicators in the model, which would result in various evaluation scores for the same geosites. The paper also provides a comparative analysis of the assessment carried out by two different target groups – potential geotourists and geoexperts. The results obtained by AHP and descriptive statistics are quite similar, which confirms the reliability of respondents' answers and the results gained. The analyzed sites are differently positioned in the evaluation matrix, and implications are further discussed in the paper .

Among the significant number of historical monuments of the Lviv (Western Ukraine) should pay tribute to unique landscapes and geological sights. In particular in the Lviv there are more than 100 limnological objects of interest to recreational, green and scientific tourism. The objects of our research are six reservoirs belonging to the basins of the Vistula and Dniester rivers and are located in the southwest of Lviv. Among these reservoirs is only one lake of karst-suffosion origin, the rest of them-are artificial.