Geodiversity and Mining Towards the Development of Geotourism: A Global Perspective

Abstract

Geodiversity and geological heritage are considered to be parallel and closely related concepts of biodiversity and biological heritage. Biodiversity is based and exists on the geodiversity of a territory. In the same way, mining activity and mining heritage are distinguished as contributing to social and economic development. The mining heritage is linked to the geological heritage and has become increasingly important for its social value and relationship with tourist activities. This study aims to analyze these fields' intellectual structure through bibliometrics as a current and innovative methodology that allows a full understanding of their structure and the relationships between these fields of cultural heritage, geodiversity, mining and geotourism. The following methodology considered: i) Search for classified information with scientific rigour in an indexed database, using search descriptors that cover the objective set, ii) analysis of scientific articles through graphical and statistical output schemes, and iii) discussion of the contributions, methodologies used, and trends on the subject. 709 documents of 29 years (1990-2019) from the Scopus database were analyzed. The results show the main themes, countries and influential institutions in cultural heritage, geodiversity, mining and tourism, which address six major research topics ranging from sustainable mining to geodiversity. Extensive information and understanding are provided that other research has partially addressed, allowing current and potential research areas to be identified.