Geoheritage resources and new direction of infrastructural growth in Egypt: From geosite assessment to policy development

Geoheritage can be exploited as a valuable geological resource in many countries and regions. Field investigations in a northeastern area of Egypt, to be named provisionally as the Qattamiya–Galala Corridor, permit to establish its geoheritage resources. Methodologically, this study includes identification and general description of geoheritage sites (geosites) on the basis of field experience, their semi-quantitative assessment by multiple criteria with scoring system, and qualitative documentation of their actual exploitation. This work uses the assessment approach already tested in Egypt and beyond. It focuses on geosites’ uniqueness (rarity) and several other properties such as number of geoheritage types, accessibility, vulnerability, need for interpretation, and scientific, educational, touristic, and aesthetic importance, each of which is scored. A total of 15 geosites are established and ranked from local to global. They belong to nine geoheritage types (palaeogeographical, sedimentary, stratigraphical, tectonic, economical, palaeontological, geomorphological, geohistorical, and igneous). Their perfect accessibility, absence of dangers, and aesthetic attractiveness should be noted. Many of these geosites need professional interpretation, i.e., they are not informative to unprepared visitors. These geoheritage resources are already exploited actively for the purposes of geosciences education and research. However, almost all geosites are not used in tourism. Importantly, many geosites are linked to mining activities or located close to beach recreation destinations. Their effective management requires conservation (cataloguing and physical maintenance) and geotourism development (installation of interpretive panels and marketing). A suitable option to achieve these tasks is geopark creation. The presence of important geoheritage resources in the study area and in the other parts of Egypt raises questions about development of the national policy for geoheritage resources exploitation. Particularly, this policy should address such issues as establishing legal frameworks and norms of geoheritage exploitation, creating and expanding national geopark network, and paying attention to waste management. Conjugation of major, country-level initiatives like the Galala project with geopark creation seems to be promising aspect of the geoheritage resources policy.