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Geomorphosites and Natural Hazards: Teaching the Importance of Geomorphology in Society

Geoheritage volume 4, pages 195–203 (2012)Cite this article

Abstract

Geomorphosites and geological landscapes are among the most important tourist attractions of rural and mountain areas. In the past decades, especially thanks to several research and cultural projects on geological heritage, many regional and local authorities have started inventorying and publicising their landscapes and sites of geological and geomorphological interest publishing booklets, geotouristic maps and equipping their territories with explanatory panels. Nevertheless, geology and geomorphology are able to occupy the head titles of the major newspapers or make the breaking news on TV channels only when natural hazards hit the population. Making the processes that shape the morphologies at the Earth’s surface understandable to a wider public and helping people to “read” the wide variety of signs and remnants of recent or remote natural disasters might help to retain society’s memory of these phenomena and therefore minimise human and material losses. The geomorphological scars in the landscape that remind, if adequately interpreted, past natural and or human-induced disasters are ideal spots for geo-environmental education and should therefore be the subject of a scientific programme able to exploit their didactic value. This paper reports some interesting examples of such sites in Italy.

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Acknowledgements

This paper has been prepared in the framework of Project RFO 2009 (Jo De Waele). The authors wish to thank Prof. Giuseppe Mastronuzzi for the picture in Fig. 9 and for his useful discussions on the tsunami deposits of Apulia.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Largo S. Eufemia 19, 41121, Modena, Italy

    Paola Coratza

  2. Istituto Italiano di Speleologia, University of Bologna, Via Zamboni 67, 40126, Bologna, Italy

    Jo De Waele

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  1. Paola Coratza
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  2. Jo De Waele
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Correspondence to Paola Coratza.

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Coratza, P., De Waele, J. Geomorphosites and Natural Hazards: Teaching the Importance of Geomorphology in Society. Geoheritage 4, 195–203 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12371-012-0058-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12371-012-0058-0

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