Geodiversity

First of all reader an apology as I appear to have neglected you since going to Cyprus, but don't fear, I'm back now with more exciting news on geoscience communication;

Whilst trawling endless pages for something completely unrelated to this blog I came acroos a section on the Natural England website, entitled Geodiversity. Their definition of geodiversity is as follows;
"In simple terms, geodiversity is the variety of rocks, minerals, fossils, soils, landforms and natural processes"

The website goes on to explain all of the reasons that geodiversity is important covering in simple (but very factual terms) economic development, toursism, recreation and climate change. This is fantastic as it is promoting geoscience education to the public! Many people use the natural England website to plan days out and this information is needed in many other places too. The site has a geological histpry of England by county, again simple but factual and suitable for both adults and children to understand.
There is a large section explaining how the geodiversity of England is protected and managed, and several PDF's explaining geological conservation. If natural England has got behind this topic and is committed to it it's a fabulous start for communicationg geoscience, so well done Natural England. We still need to do more though! I'd suggest geological information signs at areas managed by natural England (I've seen these in a GeoPark in Spain, and they work really well, just simple drawings explaining what's going on), adn maybe a little more detailed information on the website. Maybe even geo-guides at locations on busy Summer days. But all of this costs money and the time of volunteers, so in order to get a scheme started we need to promote communication further and hope we can get more people on board!

GF