Aït Bou Oulli valley is located in the heart of the Moroccan central High‐Atlas, with a height of 4,068 metres in Ighil M'goun and 3,800 metres in Rat Mountain. Mountain areas are characterised by higher geodiversity compared with other areas. The valley possesses a geoheritage that is very rich and diverse, has an exceptional landscape of high mountains and attracts tourists every year. However, the number of visitors is still restricted because of a lack of tools for promotion, valorisation and mediation of this heritage. It is with the aim to promote this rich heritage that the present work was performed. The work focuses on the inventory, selection and quantitative evaluation of the remarkable geomorphosites in order to classify them. The results reveal the presence of 81 potential sites, of which 24 are conducive to geotourism. These conducive sites included: nine fluvial landforms of which five are enviable panoramic viewpoints and four are karstic forms; four structural landforms; three glacial landforms: two gravitatives landforms; one anthropic landform; and one lake landform. Rich information provided by this study and knowledge of these new geomorphosites are important for promotion of tourism activities in the Aït Bou Oulli region and can assist planners and authorities to formulate suitable plans for sustained development of the region.
Demnate commune and High-Tessaout valley are located in the Moroccan central High-Atlas. They have a great and much diversified geological and geomorphological heritage and exceptional landscapes of high mountains.The data obtained from the current work indicate that the studied area present high tourist vocation, in the fact that this territory preserves a large number of geosites linked to many witnesses fossils of extinct animals such dinosaurs footprints, outcropping rock formations of the Precambrian and Mesozoic. Further, it has many remarkable landforms and geosites such as canyons, natural bridge, spectacular waterfalls and scree slopes. The findings support that the area attracts many tourists every year. However, this number remains restricted due to the lack of tools of promotion and mediation of its geoheritage and also due to the low exploitation of the geodiversity. Regarding this situation, geotouristic routes represented on touristic map appear as an essential tool for geotourism promotion and as an efficient means of geosciences popularisation. This paper illustrates three geotouristic routes describing the main geosites in rural areas of Demnate and High-Tessaout valley. These geotourism itineraries can help to explain the high potential interest of the studied areas in geotourism terms.
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