Saving the stones
A mere 17 years ago, few people outside the biological sciences had ever heard of ‘biodiversity’. The signing of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity at the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit in 1992 changed all that: it not only brought a new word into general use, but also stimulated an international movement to conserve genetic, species and ecosystem diversity. It gave increased strength and impetus to wildlife conservation in all regions of the planet, and affected all levels, from internationally threatened species to local wildlife sites.
In the UK, Local Biodiversity Action Plans have been prepared, wildlife numbers are being used as environmental performance indicators and Species Recovery Programmes are being implemented. And this huge wildlife conservation focus has been added to the already impressive efforts of organisations such as WWF, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and county Wildlife Trusts.
But it’s wrong to equate nature conservation solely with wildlife conservation. Biodiversity is only half of the natural environment; the physical, inanimate or abiotic world also has a geological and geomorphological diversity, or ‘geodiversity’. Last year’s International Year of Planet Earth helped to cement this principle.
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There are several different definitions of geodiversity. It could be defined as ‘the natural range (diversity) of geological (rocks, minerals, fossils), geomorphological (landforms, processes) and soil features. It includes their assemblages, relationships, properties, interpretations and systems’. Mick Stanley of environmental consultancy Geodiversity Consulting prefers a wider definition: ‘The link between people, landscapes and culture; it is the variety of geological environments, phenomena and processes that make those landscapes, rocks, minerals, fossils and soils that provide the framework for life on Earth.’
This latter point is important because without the variation in topography, physical processes and geological materials, there would be much less biodiversity. But the world’s geodiversity is valuable in many other ways. For example, almost all natural resources that aren’t grown are derived from the Earth’s crust. Over the centuries, human societies have been adept at exploiting the diversity of these materials, whether it be metals, building materials, industrial minerals, gemstones or fuels. Even the variation in Scottish malt whiskies is partly related to the mineral content of the local water.
The variation in topography and physical processes – whether in mountain, coastal, fluvial, desert, plateau, glacial or volcanic environments – is reflected by the diverse landscapes that provide the basis for many leisure activities. For example, the varying difficulty of ski runs is largely related to the steepness and topography encountered on the mountain. The Grand Canyon in the USA, the Norwegian fjords and Australia’s Uluru (Ayers Rock) are visited mainly because of their physical attributes; they are geotourism, rather than ecotourism, destinations.
Uluru is held to be sacred by the local Aboriginal people, and many other mountains, hills and rocks around the world also have spiritual value. And of course, the world’s geological resources have immense value to scientific research, with the rock and fossil records providing the evidence to reconstruct the history of the Earth and the evolution of life. These and the many other values provided by the world’s geodiversity can be referred to as ‘geosystem services’, the physical equivalent of the ‘ecosystem services’ that are much discussed in ecological circles.
Solid as a rock?
There is a natural tendency to think of wildlife as being fragile and vulnerable and therefore in need of conservation, whereas rocks and mountains tend to be seen as stable, static and much too abundant ever to be endangered. This is an oversimplification, because many geological sites are extremely fragile.
In Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, USA, visitors have damaged thousands of cave deposits, often in seeking physical souvenirs of their visits. The same is true of petrified wood. At one site in northwestern USA’s Yellowstone National Park, visitors have removed a whole fossil tree trunk; a high fence now protects the remaining trunk. At Crackington Haven in Cornwall, the beach comprises dark grey rounded shale pebbles with attractive quartz veins. A significant amount of this material has been removed by the bucket- or trailer-load for use in garden landscaping schemes. In Australia, the wholesale removal of exfoliated sandstone slabs from escarpments around Sydney for use in garden landscaping has been a major factor in the serious decline of a local snake species. Other threats to geodiversity include the quarrying of important landform features such as eskers, limestone pavements and volcanic cones; urban expansion or hard engineering of river banks or coastlines, thus destroying important geological sites; soil erosion resulting from unsustainable agricultural practices; and the remodelling of topography to create golf courses.
But the biggest threat of all is probably ignorance of the potential impacts of human activity. When it comes to biodiversity, it may be possible to reintroduce species or establish seed or DNA banks, and in some cases, restoration of physical systems is also possible – for example, channelled rivers or coastlines obscured by hard sea defences. But once destroyed, important rock, mineral and fossil sites aren’t restorable, and this means that their conservation is even more important.
Protected sites
There is, however, a growing awareness of the importance of protecting precious geodiversity sites, and there is a hierarchy of measures available, from the international to the local level.
For example, the UK has two geological UNESCO World Heritage sites: the Giant’s Causeway, with its famous basalt columns, and the Dorset and East Devon Coast, also known as the Jurassic Coast (although, in fact, it exposes an almost continuous sequence of rocks covering 190 million years from the Triassic to the Cretaceous periods). Elsewhere in the world, there are more than 100 World Heritage sites of geological interest. Some, such as the Grand Canyon, Canadian Rocky Mountains, Galápagos Islands and Great Barrier Reef, are world famous, but others are barely known. Miguasha National Park in southeast Quebec, Canada, for example, is the world’s most outstanding site for fossil fish of the Devonian period.
A more recent UNESCO-supported programme is the Global Geoparks initiative, which currently comprises 54 geoparks – 32 sites in Europe, 18 in China and one each in Brazil, Iran, Australia and Malaysia. Geoparks are areas where the significant geological heritage is used to promote sustainable geotourism, thus benefiting the local economy. There are seven in the UK, including Marble Arch Caves and Cuilcagh Mountain Park in Northern Ireland, the Fforest Fawr Geopark in Wales and the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The major nature conservation site network in Britain comprises sites of special scientific interest (SSSIs). Of more than 6,500 SSSIs, about a third are geodiversity related, including Hutton’s Unconformity at Siccar Point in southeast Scotland and the Blakeney Esker in Norfolk. The UK also has about 100 areas protected by Limestone Pavement Orders and about 3,000 so-called regionally important geological and geomorphological sites, areas identified as having an educational, historical, or aesthetic value from an Earth science perpective, but that don’t have formal statutory protection.
Wider landscape
In recent years, conservationists have come to realise that using protected areas to safeguard specific sites often results in a fragmented network that’s vulnerable to widespread threats such as climate change or other forces at work outside the area’s boundaries: there’s little point in protecting a lake if the rivers that empty into it are highly polluted. Hence, a ‘wider landscape’ approach is necessary.
Biodiversity conservation is partially fulfilling this role by protecting habitats as well as species. But biodiversity occurs everywhere, even in cities, and the same is true of geodiversity. A ‘wider landscape’ approach to geodiversity would see the natural topography and physical processes protected and restored wherever they occur, and where changes are necessary, they should be geomorphologically authentic. In several countries, rivers are being returned from their concrete-channel straitjackets to a more natural, meandering form. Similarly, where topography is to be remodelled in golf course construction, it should respect the character of the natural landforms.These and other approaches are being brought together in Local Geodiversity Action Plans – more than 40 of which are already published or in preparation in the UK – and the National Geodiversity Action Plan being developed by Natural England. Together with government planning guidance now emphasising the need for both biodiversity and geological conservation, it looks as though the Cinderella status of the latter is being brought to an end through an understanding that nature has geodiversity as well as biodiversity.
March 2009
In the UK, Local Biodiversity Action Plans have been prepared, wildlife numbers are being used as environmental performance indicators and Species Recovery Programmes are being implemented. And this huge wildlife conservation focus has been added to the already impressive efforts of organisations such as WWF, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and county Wildlife Trusts.
But it’s wrong to equate nature conservation solely with wildlife conservation. Biodiversity is only half of the natural environment; the physical, inanimate or abiotic world also has a geological and geomorphological diversity, or ‘geodiversity’. Last year’s International Year of Planet Earth helped to cement this principle.
Service provider
There are several different definitions of geodiversity. It could be defined as ‘the natural range (diversity) of geological (rocks, minerals, fossils), geomorphological (landforms, processes) and soil features. It includes their assemblages, relationships, properties, interpretations and systems’. Mick Stanley of environmental consultancy Geodiversity Consulting prefers a wider definition: ‘The link between people, landscapes and culture; it is the variety of geological environments, phenomena and processes that make those landscapes, rocks, minerals, fossils and soils that provide the framework for life on Earth.’
This latter point is important because without the variation in topography, physical processes and geological materials, there would be much less biodiversity. But the world’s geodiversity is valuable in many other ways. For example, almost all natural resources that aren’t grown are derived from the Earth’s crust. Over the centuries, human societies have been adept at exploiting the diversity of these materials, whether it be metals, building materials, industrial minerals, gemstones or fuels. Even the variation in Scottish malt whiskies is partly related to the mineral content of the local water.
The variation in topography and physical processes – whether in mountain, coastal, fluvial, desert, plateau, glacial or volcanic environments – is reflected by the diverse landscapes that provide the basis for many leisure activities. For example, the varying difficulty of ski runs is largely related to the steepness and topography encountered on the mountain. The Grand Canyon in the USA, the Norwegian fjords and Australia’s Uluru (Ayers Rock) are visited mainly because of their physical attributes; they are geotourism, rather than ecotourism, destinations.
Uluru is held to be sacred by the local Aboriginal people, and many other mountains, hills and rocks around the world also have spiritual value. And of course, the world’s geological resources have immense value to scientific research, with the rock and fossil records providing the evidence to reconstruct the history of the Earth and the evolution of life. These and the many other values provided by the world’s geodiversity can be referred to as ‘geosystem services’, the physical equivalent of the ‘ecosystem services’ that are much discussed in ecological circles.
Solid as a rock?
There is a natural tendency to think of wildlife as being fragile and vulnerable and therefore in need of conservation, whereas rocks and mountains tend to be seen as stable, static and much too abundant ever to be endangered. This is an oversimplification, because many geological sites are extremely fragile.
In Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, USA, visitors have damaged thousands of cave deposits, often in seeking physical souvenirs of their visits. The same is true of petrified wood. At one site in northwestern USA’s Yellowstone National Park, visitors have removed a whole fossil tree trunk; a high fence now protects the remaining trunk. At Crackington Haven in Cornwall, the beach comprises dark grey rounded shale pebbles with attractive quartz veins. A significant amount of this material has been removed by the bucket- or trailer-load for use in garden landscaping schemes. In Australia, the wholesale removal of exfoliated sandstone slabs from escarpments around Sydney for use in garden landscaping has been a major factor in the serious decline of a local snake species. Other threats to geodiversity include the quarrying of important landform features such as eskers, limestone pavements and volcanic cones; urban expansion or hard engineering of river banks or coastlines, thus destroying important geological sites; soil erosion resulting from unsustainable agricultural practices; and the remodelling of topography to create golf courses.
But the biggest threat of all is probably ignorance of the potential impacts of human activity. When it comes to biodiversity, it may be possible to reintroduce species or establish seed or DNA banks, and in some cases, restoration of physical systems is also possible – for example, channelled rivers or coastlines obscured by hard sea defences. But once destroyed, important rock, mineral and fossil sites aren’t restorable, and this means that their conservation is even more important.
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Protected sites
There is, however, a growing awareness of the importance of protecting precious geodiversity sites, and there is a hierarchy of measures available, from the international to the local level.
For example, the UK has two geological UNESCO World Heritage sites: the Giant’s Causeway, with its famous basalt columns, and the Dorset and East Devon Coast, also known as the Jurassic Coast (although, in fact, it exposes an almost continuous sequence of rocks covering 190 million years from the Triassic to the Cretaceous periods). Elsewhere in the world, there are more than 100 World Heritage sites of geological interest. Some, such as the Grand Canyon, Canadian Rocky Mountains, Galápagos Islands and Great Barrier Reef, are world famous, but others are barely known. Miguasha National Park in southeast Quebec, Canada, for example, is the world’s most outstanding site for fossil fish of the Devonian period.
A more recent UNESCO-supported programme is the Global Geoparks initiative, which currently comprises 54 geoparks – 32 sites in Europe, 18 in China and one each in Brazil, Iran, Australia and Malaysia. Geoparks are areas where the significant geological heritage is used to promote sustainable geotourism, thus benefiting the local economy. There are seven in the UK, including Marble Arch Caves and Cuilcagh Mountain Park in Northern Ireland, the Fforest Fawr Geopark in Wales and the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The major nature conservation site network in Britain comprises sites of special scientific interest (SSSIs). Of more than 6,500 SSSIs, about a third are geodiversity related, including Hutton’s Unconformity at Siccar Point in southeast Scotland and the Blakeney Esker in Norfolk. The UK also has about 100 areas protected by Limestone Pavement Orders and about 3,000 so-called regionally important geological and geomorphological sites, areas identified as having an educational, historical, or aesthetic value from an Earth science perpective, but that don’t have formal statutory protection.
Wider landscape
In recent years, conservationists have come to realise that using protected areas to safeguard specific sites often results in a fragmented network that’s vulnerable to widespread threats such as climate change or other forces at work outside the area’s boundaries: there’s little point in protecting a lake if the rivers that empty into it are highly polluted. Hence, a ‘wider landscape’ approach is necessary.
Biodiversity conservation is partially fulfilling this role by protecting habitats as well as species. But biodiversity occurs everywhere, even in cities, and the same is true of geodiversity. A ‘wider landscape’ approach to geodiversity would see the natural topography and physical processes protected and restored wherever they occur, and where changes are necessary, they should be geomorphologically authentic. In several countries, rivers are being returned from their concrete-channel straitjackets to a more natural, meandering form. Similarly, where topography is to be remodelled in golf course construction, it should respect the character of the natural landforms.These and other approaches are being brought together in Local Geodiversity Action Plans – more than 40 of which are already published or in preparation in the UK – and the National Geodiversity Action Plan being developed by Natural England. Together with government planning guidance now emphasising the need for both biodiversity and geological conservation, it looks as though the Cinderella status of the latter is being brought to an end through an understanding that nature has geodiversity as well as biodiversity.
March 2009
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