Abstract
Geotourism is essentially ‘geological tourism’. The geological element focuses on geology and landscape and includes both ‘form’, such as landforms, rock outcrops, rock types, sediments, soils and crystals, and ‘process’, such as volcanism, erosion, glaciation etc. The tourism element of geotourism includes tourists visiting, learning from, appreciating and engaging in geosites. Geotourism is an integral part of UNESCO’s geoparks and is essential to their development. Geotourism adds to ecotourism’s principal focus on plants (flora) and animals (fauna) by adding a third dimension of the abiotic environment. Thus it is growing around the world through the growth of geoparks as well as independently in many natural and urban areas where tourism’s focus in on the geological environment.
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Acknowledgements
This paper is based on a keynote address given at the VIII European Geoparks Conference ‘New Challenges with Geotourism’ held by Geopark Naturtejo, at Idanha-a-Nova, Portugal, from 14 to 16 September 2009. It also includes information derived from two books published in 2010, Geotourism: The Tourism of Geology and Landscape and Global Geotourism Perspectives, both edited by David Newsome and myself. The author acknowledges the contribution of Professor Newsome in this work. He also wishes to thank the two anonymous reviewers of an earlier draft for their insightful comments and suggestions to the paper.
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Dowling, R.K. Geotourism’s Global Growth. Geoheritage 3, 1–13 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12371-010-0024-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12371-010-0024-7