1 Introduction

The knowledge of geoheritage is demanded by the contemporary society because this is an important resource for geoscience advance, field-based geological education, and tourism development [10, 14, 48, 51, 64]. However, this knowledge has remained too limited or even close to zero in many geographical domains [20, 37, 46]. Indeed, field-based geoheritage inventories remain important, but it would be unrealistic to expect so high productivity of geoconservationists to achieve a really comprehensive description of all possible geosites in all regions of the world in the nearest future (solution of such an ambitious task can take not less than a century of research). In such conditions, the other possibilities that do not require field-based inventories should not be ignored. One of them can be documentation of geosites on the basis of pure geological publications (first of all, journal articles). Principally, the importance of previous geological works for dealing with geosites is well-known and undisputable [5]. However, it is unclear whether it is possible to identify, characterize, and report geosites on the basis of the only published, geoheritage-unrelated information. If this is really possible, the related approaches will be demanded.

Essnetially, geoheritage can be very different, and, for instance, geosites can represent palaeogeographical features. The application of the palaeogeographical knowledge to geoheritage studies has already been conceptualized. Bruno et al. [7] argued that localities with more or less unique palaeogeographical features can be attributed to a separate geoheritage type with some peculiarities. These specialists also offered a classification of this type and proposed to differentiate it into seven subtypes, which can co-occur in some geosites. Henriques et al. [18] continued the discussion and emphasized on the complexity of palaegeographical heritage to be understood as a whole cluster of the different geoheritage types. Particularly, this cluster is related to the intersection of the palaeontological, sedimentological, stratigraphical, and some other knowledge. Various palaeographical aspects are commonly addressed in regional geoheritage studies [17, 29, 40, 43, 60]. However, the focus on this geoheritage type has remained insufficient, and the related global knowledge seems to be biased. Indeed, geologists (also palaeogeographers) know about their objects of study much more than geoconservationists. The experience of the former is essential for finding exceptional localities to be considered as world-class geosites. The Dababiya Quarry in Egypt [1] and the Lagonaki Highland in Russia [34] are examples of when pure geological (particularly, palaeogeographical) research helped to find very important geoheritage features.

Information of exceptional palaeogeographical localities published in pure geological articles in major international journals seems to be promising material to test the very possibility of dealing with geosites without visiting them. The objective of the present paper is to analyze the suitability of this information for geoheritage with several, randomly selected examples from different parts of the world and geological time slices. Particularly, it is checked whether the available sources of pure geological knowledge can be used to identify and characterize geosites, and, if not, what are the difficulties. In other words, the research question is whether a single geological article focused on an exciting geological feature can be enough to propose a new geosite. The general need in such a meta-analysis is dictated by the noted urgency of consideration of all exceptional geological localities as geosites and also the importance of a broad involvement of geologists (also palaeogeographers) in geoheritage studies.

2 Material and method

The ideas of geoheritage and geosites have already been developed extensively [8, 14, 15, 39, 48, 51, 63]. Generally, geoheritage is an entity of more or less unique (rare) geological features that are valuable for science, education, and tourism and need conservation, whereas geosites are in-situ manifestations (natural outcrops, road cuttings, quarries etc.) of geoheritage (cf. [15]). Depending on a geological phenomenon represented in a given geosite, the latter can be attributed to one or several geoheritage types, including the palaeogeographical type [7]. Such localities usually represent sedimentary rock packages reflecting notable palaeoenvironmental and/or palaeoecological peculiarities. Taphonomical and ichnological patterns, past geological events (including catastrophes), and geoarcheological features are also related to the noted geoheritage type, as well as geological indicators important for palaeogeographical mapping [7]. For instance, several typical palaeogeographical geosites can be found in Mountainous Adygeya in the south of Russia, where they show a wide spectrum of palaeoenvironments and palaeoecosystems (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1
figure 1

Examples of the existing geosites with high palaeogeographical value from Mountainous Adygeya (Western Caucasus, southwestern Russia): A Early Cretaceous alluvial plain (note cross-bedding in the lower part of the sandstone sequence and parallel-bedding in the upper part of the sandstone sequence) (Shakhan geosite); B Late Jurassic tropical carbonate platform (note extensive outcrops of limestones) with reefs (note a peak in the center) (Lagonaki geosite), C Early Jurassic deep sea bottom (note dark laminated shales indicating formed in oxygen depleted conditions) (Sakhray geosite). See Fig. 2 for location of the area. These examples are given only to show how palaeogeographical geosites can principally look like

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The present study tests the suitability of the published information about palaeogeographical localities for geoheritage studies without visiting them in the field, and the objects of study are pure geological journal article (not geosites). For this purpose, ten exceptional examples of such localities are taken from the fresh, geoheritage-unrelated articles published in major international journals. These articles are selected tentatively (a diverse, but simple and small sample of cases is enough for the present paper), but with two basic criteria. First, these are the outcomes of geoheritage-unrelated palaeogeographical research. Second, the localities mentioned in these articles are of really international importance. The selected examples represent different geographical domains and geological time slices (Fig. 2). It should be stressed that the selected articles themselves constitute the material of the present study. In other words, the latter utilizes a kind of meta-analysis, which is an instrument for treatment of the published information; it is popular in social sciences [6, 58], applied widely in environmental sciences [33, 55, 57], and occasionally used in geological sciences [38, 47].

Fig. 2
figure 2

Geographical (A) and stratigraphical (B) distribution of the localities considered in the present article. CR—Cape Range Anticline [49], CSC—Cape south coast [16], Do—Dongqiao village [59], DPP—Dinosaur Provincial Park [32], EP—Ennedi Plateau [23, 62], Li—Limberg Quarry [45], LS—Lontras Shale [53, 54], MA—Mountainous Adygeya (see text and Fig. 1), MM—Madène el Mrakib [30], NEWB—Northeastern Williston Basin [42], and Sh—Shirgesht area [41]. The geological time scale follows the recommendations of the International Commission on Stratigraphy ([12], see stratigraphy.org for possible updates) regarding unit nomenclature, ages, and colors

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The published information about each locality in the selected articles was analyzed carefully, as follows. First of all, the geoheritage importance of each palaeogeographical locality was specified. This is a qualitative, interpretation-based procedure, which is necessary to argue that the given locality can be regarded as a true geosite. Then, specific geosite properties were addressed. Various properties of this kind are known [5, 8, 48, 52, 61, 64, 65]. It is reasonable to check whether research already done in the field for pure geological purposes and then published allow to establish these properties without additional field geoheritage investigations. Therefore, only those properties, the understanding of which requires initial, geoheritage-unrelated, field-based documentation, were considered in the present work. These properties are listed and briefly explained in Table 1.

Table 1 Tentative system used in the present study for the assessment of suitability (quality) of information about world-class palaeogeographical localities in particular journal articles
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On the basis of the content analysis of each selected journal article, the opportunity to establish each property with the information from the only this article was assessed by several criteria (Table 1). The scores assigned to these criteria reflect the relative importance of the properties and the relative utility of the different pieces of the information. The total sum of the scores can range from 10 (the most limited suitability of the information) to 100 (the excellent suitability of the information). Indeed, this scoring system (Table 1) is novel, but provisional and proposed for the only purposes of the present study. Nonetheless, it allows assessing articles by the proposed criteria objectively. This semi-quantitative procedure is essential to check the overall suitability of the selected articles to description of the relevant palaeogeographical geosites. In other words, the proposed assessment system (Table 1) aims at literature sources, not geosites. Importantly, this study does not present any full-scale assessment of geosites with the available approaches [5, 52]. This task is left for further investigations. Nonetheless, the present work is analytical and solves a particular methodological task.

3 Results

The analysis of the selected pure geological articles implies that the considered palaeogeographical localities differ essentially, but all of them are exceptional and demonstrate high geoheritage importance (Table 2). In the other words, these localities can be interpreted as world-class geosites representing the palaeogeographical type of geoheritage. They represent the different regions and geological time slices (Fig. 2), and they expose different features (Table 2), which can be attributed to all subtypes of the palaeogeographical geoheritage type (Table 3). The facies subtype is present in all selected localities, and the mapping, palaeoecosystem, and event subtypes are also relatively common. All localities possess the features, which can be attributed to two and more subtypes (Table 3).

Table 2 Basic information on the localities reported in the selected literature sources (compiled and originally interpreted specially for the purposes of the present study)
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Table 3 Subtypes of the palaeogeographical type of geoheritage present in the localities reported in the selected literature sources
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The suitability of the geoheritage-related information available in the analyzed, pure geological journal articles differs (Table 4). It is moderate in the majority of the cases, with the total scores ranging between 50 and 80. Most commonly, the total scores are < 75. The information about particular geosite properties is explained below.

Table 4 Suitability (quality) of the information about geoheritage present in the localities reported in the selected literature sources
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The rarity of the palaeogeographical features from the considered localities and their intrinsic diversity can be understood more or less clearly in all cases (Table 4). Less clear is the published information necessary for geosite choice. Some articles characterize palaeogeographical features scattered through relatively large areas, and it remains unclear which particular outcrop or quarry can be chosen as the most typical or complete one to serve as a geosite. The situation is better in several other cases where single outcrops are considered or where the manifestations of the palaeogeographical features are described and illustrated in detail, which permits to choose geosite. Forms, sizes, and especially configurations of the potential geosites cannot be established clearly in many cases (Table 4). The published information is often insufficient to judge of these parameters.

Accessibility is very important to geosites [5, 11, 24, 35, 56], but the related properties are poorly reported in the selected journal articles (Table 4). The information about the large-scale accessibility is chiefly absent, although it can be collected with more or less certainty from some other sources. The external accessibility is indicated differently, but many works do not provide enough information to understand how to get to the geosites. Finally, the internal accessibility is also unclear, but the illustrations available in some articles permit to realize the easiness of motion within the localities. The vulnerability of the geosites to the action of dangerous natural or anthropogenic processes is fully unclear in all cases (Table 4), although this property is highly important to understand whether the potential geosites need special geoconservation procedures. Moreover, the vulnerability of the different parts of the same area possessing unique palaeogeographical features is must knowing for the optimal choice of geosites.

The significance of the considered localities for science (new and ongoing research projects), education (first of all, training skills of university students in geology), and tourism (geo-, eco-, and other forms of nature-based tourism) is explained in about a half of the articles, and the information from the others can be interpreted to realize this importance rather easily (Table 4). On the one hand, this leaves impression that pure geological research allows to understand adequately the utility of the exceptional features. On the other hand, it is also clear that the published information can be useful chiefly for research planning, whereas the educational and touristic significance can only be supposed. Naturally, aesthetics of the localities are not mentioned in the considered articles, which focus on pure scientific matters. However, many articles are illustrated richly, and the available images permit to judge of the aesthetic properties of the localities (Table 4).

4 Discussion

Ten examples considered in this paper (they can be understood as case studies, each of which test a methodological assumption) show that pure geological research can provide information that can be used for identification of geosites. At least, exceptional palaeogeographical localities, which can be treated as geosites, can be outlined on the basis of single geoheritage-unrelated publications. However, the information available in the considered journal articles is not ideal for the full-scale geoheritage analysis, and the suitability of this information is chiefly moderate. For instance, some localities are rather large, and geosite choice is impossible there; such important properties as accessibility and vulnerability of geosites cannot be established definitely in many cases. Indeed, this limits the opportunity to deal with world-class palaeogeographical geosites without visiting them.

Two additional challenges are as follows. First, the present work focused on single journal articles, but what if one potential geosite was characterized in several publications? Citations to some (if not many) of them can be missed in the newer articles, and some articles could be published in too local journals and in the language other than English. This problem cannot be solved fully with the major bibliographical databases, not only because of their limited coverage of the literature, but also because the names of localities are often provisional and not reflected in articles’ abstracts. For instance, one geologist can call the locality shown on Fig. 1C as Ust-Sakhray (the name of a neighboring settlement), the other can call it as Dakh–Sakhray (this locality is situated near the confluence of two rivers with the noted names), and somebody else can call it anyhow else. How to collect the literature related to this locality? Indeed, this problem is less strong when one visited this locality personally and had the possibility to “penetrate” into the local geological literature. Although single journal articles such as those selected for the purposes of the present work can help to identify geosites, their use makes a geoconservtionist dependent on the opinion of the author(s) of these particular articles. The second challenge is that some newly proposed geosites can have some conservation status. How to exclude the possibility that they were already proposed as geosites (this could be registered in any local or national catalogue, but such sources are often almost inaccessible) or belong to any protected area or object? For instance, the locality shown on Fig. 1B belongs to a large natural reserve with very high conservation status. However, it is very unlikely that the related notion can be found in any pure geological article devoted to this locality. Among the articles selected for the present analysis, one [32] stresses the conservation status of the characterized exceptional palaeogeographical locality, but the presence/absence of this status cannot be deduced from the majority of pure geological publications. In contrast, field studies that require careful analysis of various materials and communication with other experts and local people can facilitate the understanding of the conservation status of particular geological features.

The outcomes of this tentative study show that something should be recommended to enlarge the suitability and, thus, the potential of pure geological publications for geoheritage studies. For instance, palaeogeographical research has a lot of aspects and various applications. For many decades, it has been known as very important in exploration of mineral and hydrocarbon resources [2, 25, 31]. Taking into account the importance of the world’s geoheritage resources to the contemporary society [10, 13, 14, 19, 39, 44, 48, 51, 63], another perspective of applied palaeogeographical research has appeared, namely palaeogeographical geoheritage studies. This perspective should not be missed by specialists involved into pure palaeogeographical research. Indeed, palaeogeographers cannot and should not be criticized for the often unsuitability of their articles to geoheritage studies. However, it is also clear that it would be impossible to realize the distribution and the diversity of palaeogeographical geoheritage (sensu [7, 18]) without the involvement of palaeogeographers. If so, it is reasonable to encourage the latter to pay attention to geoheritage aspects of their objects of study and to instruct them how to consider these objects in their publications. Palaeogeographers themselves will have benefits, which include (and not limited to) broader personal experience and higher demand for their publications.

Geoconservationists have developed various schemes, protocols, and approaches for geosite descriptions and assessments [5, 8, 27, 48, 52, 61, 64]. Although potentially very useful, these tools seem to be too specific and complex to many geologists, and their use require special education and skills. The algorithm proposed in this study (Fig. 3) takes into account the documented degree of suitability of the selected journal articles to geoheritage studies (Table 4). It is evident that geologists think of geological features and their interpretations, and the applied, geoheritage-related component of their research should not require extra efforts and time. Three procedures can be proposed (Fig. 3). The first of them focuses geoheritage importance. Geologists have to stress the uniqueness of their objects of study, characterize the spectrum of the notable features, and specify the most characteristic localities. This will permit to realize the existence of a geosite and its general importance (value). The second procedure aims at geosite properties. It is suggested to palaeogeographers to mention briefly form, size, configuration, accessibility, and vulnerability of exceptional localities (see Table 1 for the explanation of these properties). One–three sentences revealing these properties in a pure geological article seems to be enough and require minimal efforts, but the presence of this information will be much appreciated by geoconservationists. The third procedure is a brief explanation of the possible scientific, educational, and touristic needs in this locality and its aesthetics. The first and second procedures are essential, and the third procedure is not mandatory because the related interpretations can often be done by geoconservationists on the basis of the textual and graphic information given in pure geological publications (Table 3).

Fig. 3
figure 3

An algorithm proposed for the application of pure palaeogeographical studies to geoheritage inventories

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The present study based on the randomly selected exceptional palaeogeographical localities raises two problems. First, the partial suitability of the information of these localities published in pure geological articles gives some (if even limited) opportunity of distant geoheritage inventory based on bibliographical surveys. The importance of such literature-based investigations has already been considered [3, 4, 9, 28, 36]. The question is how to find the proper literature bearing descriptions of potential palaeogeographical geosites. Such on-line bibliographical databases as “Scopus” or “ScienceDirect” can be employed for this purpose, but finding the necessary publications with them requires state-of-the-art procedures. Second, exceptional palaeogeographical localities like those considered in the present study are rare. However, geoheritage includes not only world-class, but also less unique geosites. Are the published outcomes of pure geological research suitable for geoheritage interpretation of such “ordinary” localities? A special investigation is necessary to answer this question, but one can hypothesize that “ordinary” localities may be characterized in the available literature with less details than the exceptional localities. If so, the general usefulness of literature-based inventories is questionable.

5 Conclusions

The present study considering pure geological publications as sources of the key knowledge about world-class palaeogeographical geosites permits making three general conclusions:

  1. 1)

    ten examples of the palaeogeographical localities considered in the fresh, geoheritage-unrelated geological literature demonstrate that the outcomes of pure research can be applied for the purposes of distant geoheritage inventory, but with many limitations;

  2. 2)

    the analyzed literature sources bear important knowledge about the palaeogeographical geosites, although the latter cannot be characterized fully on the basis of the only literature information;

  3. 3)

    geologists can report their pure research so to enhance subsequent geosite studies, and geoconservationist should not miss chances to find new geosites without visiting them.

Generally, this study implies that the identification of world-class palaeogeographical geosites without visiting them is possible, but characterizing them on the basis of only published information is a challenging task. This study has theoretical, methodological, and practical implications. Particularly, it sheds light on the dual nature of the geoheritage knowledge that depends on pure (geoheritage-unrelated) and applied (geoheritage-related) research, offers a tentative instrument for the assessment of the suitability (quality) of journal articles for geoheritage interpretations, and claims geologists and geoconservationists to think of mutual interests.