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 polic |
