Abstract Geodiversity and geosite assessments precede geoheritage and geotourism utilization. The process first determines the geodiversity value of an area (based on geoscientific attributions) and then the geotourism potential of the available sites. As a result, significant geosites can be identified, which are the bases for protection and tourism. During geosite assessment, scientific and infrastructural aspects are essential because spectacular sites and landscapes carrying intrinsic or visible values generate interest among tourists and professionals. In this study, a quantitative workflow to determine the geodiversity index over an area, evaluate geosites and monitor significant ones is presented. The study area is the Bakony–Balaton UNESCO Global Geopark, where no quantitative assessment was conducted previously. A GIS-based geodiversity analysis identified the most diverse areas which gave the basis for the geosite assessment done in a ‘geodiverse’ subregion of the geopark. The most important nine of the 75 identified potential geosites were chosen to examine the spatial variance of the assessment. By continuous monitoring, we got an image of what the visitors liked or did not like there. In this way, we were able to monitor the various opinions of geotourists to present unique development strategies for each of them. A connection between the location of geosites and the spatial distribution of geodiversity values was also determined by analysing and visualizing the connection between geodiversity and geosite assessment results.

Abstract Karst aquifers are some of the most important and well-used sources of water worldwide. The tapping of karst waters for use as drinking water has been important in the historical and economic development of many karst regions. Recent studies have found that karstified rocks and aquifer systems cover c. 15% of the Earth’s ice-free land. The greatest area of karst outcrops (>1 × 10 6 km 2 ) is in Russia, the USA, China and Canada. In the Mediterranean basin, groundwater is generally more abundant in karst than in other aquifers and has been extensively exploited. Karst groundwater is also widely used in the Middle East, China, North America, and northern and eastern Africa and is of crucial importance for the sustainable development of tourism and the economy. Karst aquifers currently supply c. 10% of the global population with drinking water and, in some zones, they are the only water resource available. However, the share of karst aquifers in the global supply of water will decrease with the predicted increase in population, concentrated in urban areas, and improvements in treatment technologies for water from other sources.

Abstract The Škocjan Caves are included in UNESCO’s World Heritage List due to their outstanding natural features. The caves include a large underground canyon containing the Reka River, collapse dolines with vegetation in rock fissures and impressive archaeological sites with a rich history of speleological and scientific research. They are also included in the Ramsar Directory of Wetlands of International Importance. Together with their broader surface area, the site is known as the UNESCO Karst Biosphere Reserve. The aim of the management of the reserve is to protect the World Heritage Site and to preserve its outstanding universal value for future generations. The protection activities are regulated by the provisions of international documents, the Škocjan Caves Regional Park Act and the park’s management plan. These activities include monitoring of the water quality in the Reka River and meteorological surveys on the surface. Monitoring of the microclimate of the caves focuses on measuring the effects of tourism and monitoring the levels of radon, with the aim of the ensuring the safety of the park’s employees. Ensuring a favourable status for the underground habitats and species is laid down in the Natura 2000 management programme. Particular attention is paid to ensuring high-quality, safe visits to the caves and providing educational and awareness-raising activities on the surface of the park.

Abstract Although modern geotourism, as a form of sustainable geoheritage tourism, was only recognized as such in the 1990s, its roots lie in the seventeenth century and the Grand Tour with its domestic equivalents. At that time, a few elite travellers recorded their experiences of landscapes, natural wonders, quarries and mines. Such travellers’ observations were supplemented by those of the antiquarians for much of the eighteenth century; at that century’s close, the first modern geologists were recording their observations. The nineteenth century witnessed an explosion in public interest and engagement with geology, and field excursions were provided by the burgeoning natural history and geology societies. By the close of the nineteenth century, the Romantic movement had successfully promoted wild landscapes to a newly expanding urban population. The development of the Grand Tour and the landscape aesthetic movements, the various influential institutions, key personalities and locations are considered insofar as they provide an overview of the background to historical geotourism. All are underpinned by a theoretical consideration of the geotourism paradigm and how geotourism historical studies can contextualize modern geotourism.

Abstract This chapter explores people’s experience of the physical landscape in Scotland from the perspective of parallel developments in geological science, landscape aesthetics and tourism since the middle of the eighteenth century. It begins with tourism of awe, inspired by the Romantic movement and the excitement of discovering natural wonders promoted through contemporary literature and art during the development of modern geological science in the late eighteenth–early nineteenth centuries. Popular interest and engagement in geology declined with increasing scientific specialization, although the physical landscape continued to draw many visitors and provide creative inspiration for poets and artists. In the 1940s, the beginnings of statutory geoconservation were accompanied by renewed interest in raising public awareness of geology and the physical landscape mainly through didactic methods. More recently, exploration of the cultural links between geology and landscape is providing new opportunities for experiential re-engagement, a shift that recognizes the close links between people and the physical landscape, and one promoted through voluntary sector activity in geoconservation and the development of Geoparks. Rediscovering a sense of wonder and reconnecting with the landscape offer a means of reconciling the natural and cultural worlds and enabling wider public appreciation of geodiversity.

Abstract Waterfalls have long attracted the attention of travellers, some of whom were writers and artists who have left us a cultural legacy of their observations and interpretations. Likewise, geologists have studied and recorded these landscape features since the infancy of their science. An examination of travellers’ experiences of waterfalls since the emergence of Romanticism in eighteenth-century Europe reveals a variety of responses, both utilitarian and aesthetic. Seen as valuable sources of renewable energy, impediments to navigation, beautiful, sublime or picturesque natural wonders and resources for tourism, waterfalls continue to appeal to the Romantic traveller and the pleasure-seeking tourist. Increasingly, waterfalls are being threatened by schemes to exploit them, especially for power generation or intensive tourism development. In many parts of the world, this presents a serious challenge to those responsible for the management of this often spectacular aspect of geodiversity. This paper explores these various themes which are contextualized within the historical and cultural framework of Romanticism.

Abstract The career of the Austrian-born landscape painter Eugene von Guérard (1811–1901) was defined by his travels, which took him to Italy and Germany in the 1830s and 1840s and to Australia and New Zealand between 1852 and 1882. Today he is recognized as one of Australia’s greatest nineteenth-century landscape painters. His formative years coincided with the emergence of geology as an independent scientific discipline and a growing awareness in the wider community of the role played by volcanic activity and other geological processes in the formation of the Earth’s geomorphology. This new understanding was particularly pertinent to landscape painters, whose very subject was the form of the land; in Germany, where von Guérard trained and worked between 1838 and 1852, its relevance for landscape painters was emphasized by the influential natural scientist Alexander von Humboldt and the scientist, landscape painter and art theorist Carl Gustav Carus. They argued that the artist should paint from a geologically informed perspective. Von Guérard’s interest in volcanic geology was sparked by his experiences in southern Italy, consolidated in Germany on expeditions through the Harz and Eifel regions and then fully realized in response to the landscapes of southeastern Australia. Through his informed portrayal of sites of geological significance in each hemisphere and through the cultural value invested in them as a consequence of his depiction of them, von Guérard epitomized that recently conceived construct: the geotourist.

Abstract The first evidence of tourism on the Dutch coast can be found in drawings and etchings from the end of the sixteenth century. In this period Holland developed into one of the most urbanized regions of Europe. The interest in landscape originated in the towns. The first scenes depicted are those of mass tourism on the beach: sensation-mongers drawn to the beach by whales, sailing cars and departing kings and queens. Somewhat later the dune landscape became a main recreational focus, in which the physical aspects of the landscape were also appreciated. Around the town of Haarlem, individuals and small groups of people started exploring the dune landscape. In the wake of this new interest, landscape painting developed as an artistic genre. It became the most popular genre in the first half of the seventeenth century, and Haarlem developed as a centre for landscape painters. This paper discusses geomorphological features and geotourism engagement as depicted in several of the early etchings and landscape paintings.

Abstract This paper outlines some significant visits made to north Norway by geologists and mountaineers from Britain and Ireland from the early to late nineteenth century. These visitors wrote up their travels and climbing experiences in a region in north Norway that was difficult to get to other than by sea: Øksfjordjøkelen and Lyngen. Early travellers revealed the sights of the fjord areas and thereby promoted the region for subsequent travellers. Leopold von Buch’s Travels though Norway and Lapland during the Years 1806, 1807, and 1808 probably prompted J. D. Forbes to visit and produce Norway and Its Glaciers and Archibald Geikie’s Geological Sketches at Home and Abroad as part of the contemporary discussions about the ‘glacial theory’. In the latter years of the nineteenth century the British climbers William Cecil Slingsby and George Hastings, with local climber Josef Caspari, explored the Lyngen Peninsula. Elizabeth Main (Mrs Aubrey Le Blond) also climbed in Lyngen. As well as providing written summaries of their exploits, the early explorers included photographs in their books. Some of these images are helpful in the reconstruction of the glacierized landscapes at the end of the Little Ice Age. It is suggested that present-day travellers might leave their observations available, in digital media, for future investigators.