Integration of geoheritage in strategies for climate change resilient tourism in protected areas of Northern Portugal

Protected areas are frequently important hotspots of geodiversity. Despite being legally protected mainly because of the presence of significant or rare element of biodiversity of a territory or ecosystem, these areas incorporate valuable examples of the abiotic elements that can be considered worth protect in the context of the geoheritage. In fact, they constitute, frequently, the support for biodiversity development and maintenance.

In Portugal, the majority of the protected areas were delimited based on biological and cultural factors, but its value in terms of geodiversity is very high.

In the context of the project “Clictour - Climate change resilient tourism in protected areas of Northern Portugal”, three protected areas located in the northwest Portugal were selected in order to develop proposals for implementation of climate change resilient tourism strategies.

For this presentation we selected the structuration of a pedestrian trails network in each protected area as our case study and the integration of the values of geoheritage.

Considering the importance and diversity of geoheritage elements in these protected areas, within the general proposals for climate change resilient tourism strategies the geotouristic perspective was considered and the valorization of geomorphological and geological elements was proposed.

Consequently, we performed an inventory and evaluation of the potential geosites/geomorphosites and we considered its integration on the existing pedestrian trails, as well as the definition of new pedestrian trails based mainly in geotouristic values.

The evaluation of the different pedestrian trails was made, in terms of supporting infrastructures and interpretative features and geotouristic potential, in order to establish the most adequate trails regarding the project objective of proposing strategies for a climate change resilient tourism. It was possible to conclude the significant importance of including geoheritage in the pedestrian trails designed, stressing, however, the need to establishing effective geoconservation measures capable of minimizing the impacts resulting from its use in tourism activities.

This study was developed within the scope of the CLICTOUR project (Project NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000079), supported by the European Regional Development Fund.