A Mineralogical Museum as a Geotourism Attraction: A Case Study

Magner Turner-Carrión,Paúl Carrión-Mero,Maribel Aguilar-Aguilar,Edgar Berrezueta,Israel Turner-Salamea,Kerly Zambrano-Ruiz,Fernando Morante-Carballo

doi:10.3390/min11060582

Magner Turner-Carrión, Paúl Carrión-Mero + Show 5 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/min11060582

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Abstract

The Zaruma-Portovelo mining district in Ecuador, and in particular, Portovelo City, is home to the oldest mining museum in the country. This museum, named Museo Mineralógico Magner Turner (MMMT in Spanish), is a centre that reflects, through its collections, the history and culture of this territory. This work aimed to evaluate the MMMT as a possible geosite by analysing its contributions to the geomining heritage of the Zaruma-Portovelo district, and thus, to enhance it and promote its collections as a geotouristic attraction. The work involved three phases: (i) describing the museum and its surroundings; (ii) a semiquantitative evaluation of the museum using the Brilha method and a geosites assessment model (GAM); and (iii) a qualitative evaluation using the Delphi and SWOT methodologies to define strategies and proposals for museum development. The results obtained by the semiquantitative evaluation of the geosite with the Brilha method reflect high scientific (330/400), educational (380/400) and touristic (365/400) appeal. The applied GAM shows the museum as a geosite with high principal and additional value, placing it in the Z33 field of the global valuation matrix. In addition, the semiquantitative and qualitative evaluation made it possible to describe the importance of the museum and its collections in the development of the area. The study carried out qualified the museum as a mining site with an appropriate valuation, an example of ex-situ geological heritage conservation and a basis for geotourism development.

Highlights

IntroductionNatural diversity is a concept that integrates biodiversity and geodiversity [1]
This study aimed to evaluate the Museo Mineralógico Magner Turner (MMMT) as a geosite that combines information about and experiences of geology and gold mining through semiquantitative
According to the data provided by the MMMT, the maximum capacity per visit is 20 people

Summary

Introduction

Natural diversity is a concept that integrates biodiversity and geodiversity [1]. According to [2], geodiversity is the variability of Earth’s surface materials, landforms and physical processes (abiotic elements). Geodiversity is defined as the variety of geological elements which constitute the substrate of a region on which organic activity is based, including the anthropic [3]. The need to conserve geological elements with significant value is reflected in the study of geological heritage, whose discipline constitutes one of the most recent research areas within Earth sciences [4]. Several authors [1,2,5,6,7,8,9,10,11]

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