Elsevier

Resources Policy

Volume 59, December 2018, Pages 85-94
Resources Policy

Urban geoheritage complexity: Evidence of a unique natural resource from Shiraz city in Iran

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resourpol.2018.06.002Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Urban geoheritage is unique, but still poorly studied in the Middle East.

  • Shiraz city in SW Iran possess several types and forms of geoheritage.

  • Viewpoint geosites are available in Shiraz.

  • Geoheritage can facilitate tourism growth in Shiraz.

  • Links of geoheritage to urban socio-ecological system and streetscape perception.

Abstract

Cities often possess unique geological features (geoheritage), but knowledge relevant to its description still remains limited. Urban geoheritage can be defined as the entity of unique geological objects, geological processes, and pieces of geological environment on urban territories and within close vicinities of cities that are important to modern society because of their scientific, educational, and touristic value. The inventory of the urban geoheritage of Shiraz (a big city in the Fars Province of southwest Iran) allows for the description of several in situ and ex situ geoheritage features: 1) two viewpoint geosites (sites with panoramic views of the Zagros landforms and geological formations), 2) the salt Maharloo Lake with its hydrological and geochemical peculiarities, 3) geological specimens in museum collections and museum art objects (stone carvings and statues) with rock peculiarities and abundant fossil remains, and 4) decorative natural stones (with well-visible shells of fossil invertebrates) in building facades and street benches. This urban geoheritage appears to be a useful resource for scientists, educators, and geotourists. The complexity of the Shiraz's geoheritage is determined by its combination with historical and cultural heritage, as well as by the existence of several geoheritage types and forms. The geoheritage of Shiraz can be used for diversification of the local tourism industry. It should be also considered as a component of the city's socio-ecological system and factor contributing to urban environment and streetscape perception.

Introduction

The concept of urban geology appeared in the mid-20th century (McGill, 1964, Arnould, 1969), and its growth is reflected in the seminal works of Legget (1973) and Karrow and White (1998). Geology is thought to be an important factor of city development in regard to construction of foundations also with respect to vulnerability to earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and slope processes, building materials and water resources, etc. However, the urban geological environment also is valuable to society as a precious resource for research, education, and tourism activities. The uniqueness of geological features naturally or artificially exposed in cities makes them a kind of heritage. This heritage is often scarce due to limited publicity, but this fact only increases its importance and vulnerability. Moreover, active city growth may make available new and unique geological features. In particular, this occurs because of excavations and road cutting, accumulation of cultural layers, and storage of geological specimens in museum collections. As a result, some cities may become important areas with concentrations on geological heritage.

Several major ideas linked to unique geological features (geoheritage, geoconservation, geotourism, geosites, and geoparks – see definitions in Table 1) have been developed actively during the three last decades. Undoubtedly, these deserve application to the urban environment. Urban geoheritage has been studied on a regular basis (e.g., Del Lama et al., 2015; Reynard et al., 2017; AbdelMaksoud et al., 2018). This research has focused chiefly on European and American cities. Unfortunately, major cities in the Middle East and some other parts of the world are yet to be studied with regard to their geological uniqueness. Previous studies have revealed the geoheritage richness of Iran and, particularly, the Fars Province of this country (Farsani et al., 2012, Ghazi and Ghadiri, 2012, Habibi and Ruban, 2017a, Habibi and Ruban, 2017b, Habibi and Ruban, 2018, Mashal et al., 2012; Habibi et al., 2017a, Habibi et al., 2017b; Shahhoseini et al., 2017). Close location of some unique features to cities and towns also has been noted. In this paper, Shiraz is treated as an example of a big city possessing complex urban geoheritage. This example permits the testing of some approaches to urban geoheritage assessment and interpretation, which is the main objective of the present contribution. This paper also aims at the very introduction of the idea of urban geoheritage for specialists in urban planning and resource policy, who should be invited to participate in relevant discussions with geoscientists who traditionally work in this area.

Section snippets

Literature review and previous research gaps

In additional to the "classical" works on urban geology by McGill (1964), Arnould (1969), Legget (1973), and Karrow and White (1998), significant contributions to this concept were made by Price (1971), Legget (1984), Hannibal and Schmidt (1991), de Mulder (1993), Eyles (1994), Marker (2009), Culshaw and Price (2011), Hoppe and Lehne (2013), Bradbury (2014), Wendel (2014), Davies (2015), and Doyle (2016). Taken together, all these works focus on the outstanding importance of geological factors

Geographical and geological setting

Shiraz is a major city in the Fars Province of Iran that is located in the southwest part of the country (Fig. 1). The growth of the urban area in Shiraz, as well as the various problems of city development have been studied actively (Sarvestani et al., 2011, Bafand Kar and Kazemi, 2016, Yousefi et al., 2016, Baghapour et al., 2017, Bagheri and Tousi, 2018).

The population of the city is ~1.9 mln, concentrated in an area of 240 km2. The city is located at an elevation of ~1500 m above sea level

Methodology

Essentially, assessment of the urban geoheritage of Shiraz is based on the general principles of geoheritage description. However, this assessment involves some novelties that are relevant to a comprehensive evaluation of geoheritage complexity. A five-step algorithm is used for the purposes of this study.

  • (1)

    The geological features (manifestations of various geological peculiarities) of Shiraz city are inventoried. This means the available information about their occurrence is checked, and the

Description of geoheritage features

Several geoheritage features are established in Shiraz city (Table 3; Fig. 1). These are characterized briefly below.

Panoramic views of the Zagros mountain ranges are available in several places of Shiraz, from which two examples are most important. These are located in the northern part of the city and offer panoramic views of the Derak and Posht-e-Moleh mountains (Fig. 1, Fig. 2). These spots are viewpoint geosites recognized recently by Migoń and Pijet-Migoń (2017). In Shiraz, the noted

Dimensions of urban geoheritage complexity

Shiraz city possesses a moderate number of unique geological features (Table 3), but its urban geoheritage demonstrates a certain complexity. Three dimensions of the later are as follows. First, several geoheritage types are established in this city. These include geomorphological, sedimentary, palaeontological, stratigraphical, palaeogeographical, hydrological, and geochemical types, from which sedimentary and palaeontological types are the most common (Table 3). Second, there is a spectrum of

Conclusions

The present assessment of urban geoheritage in Shiraz city allows for three general conclusions.

  • 1)

    The city possesses several types and forms of geoheritage, including viewpoint geosites, a saline lake, museum collections, and stones used for decoration of building facades and street benches.

  • 2)

    The complexity of the city's geoheritage is determined, first of all, by its combination with its historical and cultural heritage.

  • 3)

    Urban geoheritage is important for the growth of tourism, as well as for the

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully thank G.A. Campbell (USA) for his editorial support, the anonymous reviewers for their recommendations, M.E. Johnson (USA) for his valuable support with polishing this paper, the Natural History and Technology, Narenjestan-e-Ghavam, and Haftanan Stone museums (Shiraz, Iran) for possibility to make pictures used in this paper, and also M.H. Henriques (Portugal) and W. Riegraf (Germany) for literature support. T.H. is grateful to the Shiraz University (Iran) for providing

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