The Educational Potential of Geodiversity in Ferruginous Geosystem: the Example of the Quadrilátero Ferrífero, Minas Gerais, Brazil

Abstract

One of the most significant ferruginous geosystems in Brazil and worldwide is the Quadrilatero Ferrifero, located in Minas Gerais, in its southeastern part. Its economic importance imposes intense pressure on unique environmental attributes, such as rare species of flora and fauna, speleological sites, scenic beauty, water resources, geological outcrops and fossils. To protect one of the few remnants of this geosystem not yet economically used by mining, a conservation unit of integral protection was created in 2014: the Serra do Gandarela National Park. In this context, the article aims to inventory and evaluate representative sites of geodiversity for educational purposes, indicating a methodological procedure that can be used for other ferruginous geosystems in Brazil and the world. For this, two methodological steps were used. The first involved assessing the study area as a whole, using map algebra which considered geodiversity, environmental vulnerability and capillarity of access roads. Using the results of the previous one, the second stage evaluated six specific geodiversity sites in the study area for didactic use, from a qualitative, quantitative point of view and regarding the risk of degradation. The results show that this integrated evaluation proved to be suitable, allowing the identification of the potentialities and risks of the selected sites and understanding the implications for the educational use of each one of them due to their location within the conservation unit.