Geoheritage in the Minett UNESCO Biosphere (Southern Luxembourg): Inventory, Evaluation, and Conservation Aspects of Representative Geosites

Robert Weis

doi:10.1007/s12371-022-00658-z

Abstract

The southwestern part of Luxembourg, known as Minett in the local language use, exposes an exceptionally high diversity of marine near-shore sediment rocks from the Early to Middle Jurassic, owing to its proximal position at the north-eastern margins of the Paris Basin. The iconic Minette ironstone formation is known as the worldwide largest oolitic ironstone deposit from the last 500 my and the abandoned open cast mines are nowadays protected sites with a high biodiversity, intrinsically linked to geodiversity. The schistes bitumineux unit, a lateral equivalent of the well-known Posidonienschiefer of the Holzmaden region (South Germany), is frequently studied for its exceptionally preserved fossils of marine vertebrates, cephalopods, and insect remains, deserving its status as a Fossil-Lagerstätte of international relevance. Of regional importance are the Rumelange limestones, with coral patch-reef paleo-environments. The geomorphological main feature of the region is the Cuesta of the Middle Jurassic (‘Dogger-Schichtstufe’), with several outliers (‘Zeugenberge’) that represent widely visible landmarks in the landscape. In this paper, 16 geosites, representative of the geological, palaeontological, geomorphological, and hydrogeological heritage in the Minett UNESCO biosphere, are presented and evaluated according to scientific, educational, and geotouristic criteria.

Highlights

In the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, the concept of geoheritage and its conservation has not been in the focus of national nature conservation agencies until recently (Weis and Di Cencio 2018; Weis 2020)
We identify 16 geosites in the Minett UNESCO biosphere region, which are considered representative but not exhaustive, for the region’s geodiversity
The present study is intended as a first step towards an inventory and assessment of geosites in southern Luxembourg’s Minett UNESCO Biosphere region

Summary

Introduction

In the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, the concept of geoheritage and its conservation has not been in the focus of national nature conservation agencies until recently (Weis and Di Cencio 2018; Weis 2020). The area of the Minett UNESCO Biosphere (MUB) is entirely located in the morphostructural unit of the Luxembourgish ‘Guttland’, at the north-eastern margin of the Paris Basin (N.B.:‘Minett’, in Luxembourgish language stands here for the geographic area of south-eastern Luxembourg; in contrast, ‘Minette’, in French, stands for the Minette iron ore rocks). The Palaeozoic basement (Devonian) that crops out in the northern part of the Grand Duchy, in the region of the Luxembourgish Ardennes named ‘Eislek’, is covered here by at least 700 m of Mesozoic sediments. In the south of Luxembourg, in the Minett region, rocks of early and middle Jurassic age (190–168 my) crop out.

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