Geodiversity, geological heritage and renewal of the network of geosites of the Dnipropetrovsk region

Abstract

This paper is focused on the relatively new terms in the Earth Sciences – geodiver- sity, geological heritage, geoconservation, geosites, geoparks – and their practical usage in Ukraine. The diversity of geological processes that have occurred in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, its structural-tectonic position, and the long complex history of its development, since the Precambrian until the Quaternary Epoch, combined with a large amount of natural and mining-exposed outcrops, has made it rich in various objects of geological heritage. The article gives a brief analysis of history of how the Oblast’s objects of geoecological heritage have been provided with an official state-protected status and examines those with promising natural geological monuments (geosites) that require protection. We emphasize the problem of how little attention the government nature-protection organizations of Ukraine are paying to the necessity of preserving the geological heritage, despite all positive changes in its protection at international level, including establishment of European Association for the Conservation of Geological Heritage, and a steadily growing UNESCO-supported movement of establishing geoparks, etc. We provide a qualitative and quantitative assessment of the geosites and their types according to the modern classification. We recommend analyzing a possibility of including one of the promising objects that is located in the Dniprovi Porohy Regional Landscape Park to the European Register of Geological Heritage. The paper presents the results of geological monitoring, carried out in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast after publication of the book Geosites of Ukraine, which increased the fund of promising geosites up to 70. According to the criteria by which geosites are chosen, we determined 4 geological monuments that correspond to the state protection level. Most of the objects of local-significance require further field studies, and after examination some of them were found to deserve protection as geosites of national significance. Each of the geological relics from the list, objects which are proposed for the first time, has been given a preliminary characteristic consisting of a geosite’s location, stratigraphical po- sition, tectonic structure, lithological or petrographic composition of the rocks, protected status of the relic.