The Educational Importance of Geosites Representing Geodiversity-Biodiversity Relationships: A Thematic Inventory Proposal

The relationships between geodiversity and biodiversity are a topic of growing relevance. Understanding these relationships in different contexts and scales has the potential to increase conservation efforts, especially considering climate and environmental changes. Exploring this topic in educational activities is a way to make it more accessible to the society. Considering the relevance of geosites for education, the present work proposes a thematic inventory of geosites representing relationships between geodiversity and biodiversity. With the use of a descriptive file and a classification scheme, the proposal was applied in the project Geopark Costões e Lagunas (Cliffs and Lagoons), in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. 19 geosites were identified, described, and classified, embracing different situations, and allowing approaches on several issues such as spatial and temporal scale of the relations, the influence of the diversity of elements or of specific elements, degradation risks etc. The results are intended to be applied to the educational activities that already take place in the geopark project but also to be an incentive for similar initiatives in other areas, contributing to the dissemination of the topic of relationships between geodiversity and biodiversity.