Geotourism around Poggiorsini: unexpected geological elements for a sustainable tourism in internal areas of Murge (Puglia, southern Italy)

Abstract

The recent candidacy of the Alta Murgia National Park (Puglia, southern Italy) for UNESCO Global Geopark (UGGp) opens several challenges to how to introduce geology along pathways where other topics (biological, archeological, historical, among others) are classically proposed to eco-tourists in the area. This short paper represents the first attempt to show some of the many objetcs that should be deepened to introduce geotourists to the geology of the Murge area. It is addressed to the origin and nature of outcropping rocks, exclusively sedimentary and mainly carbonate in origin. The territory around Poggiorsini village could represent the best place to begin this deepening since it hosts the three main kind of carbonate succession regionally featuring the Murge area and its flanks: Cretaceous rocks recording tropical shallow-water environments; Oligocene rocks recording lacustrine environments; Plio-Pleistocene rocks recording temperate shallow-water environments.

Geological Uniqueness and Potential Geotouristic Appeal of Murge and Premurge, the First Territory in Puglia (Southern Italy) Aspiring to Become a UNESCO Global Geopark

“…The Oligocene Calcare a Planorbis Fm crops out at the top of the Alta Murgia scarp (Jazzo Madama locality), unconformably resting on Cretaceous carbonates (Figure 15); from a panoramic point of view close to Poggiorsini, it is possible to appreciate that the formation developed on two different and not coeval depocenters [124] (Figure 15). This stratigraphic architecture can be attributed to the synsedimentary development of an active strike-slip basin [125]. The geosite has an international value both for its tectonic meaning in the area (the only record of tectonics between Cretaceous and Pliocene in the Apulia Foreland) and for the possibility that correlates its continental paleontological content to the distant Paratethys.…”

“…The geosite has an international value both for its tectonic meaning in the area (the only record of tectonics between Cretaceous and Pliocene in the Apulia Foreland) and for the possibility that correlates its continental paleontological content to the distant Paratethys. As suggested by [125], the site could offer a link with a similar setting in the Apennines, where a geosite with lacustrine succession linked to strike slip tectonics [126] is proposed in a touristic path devoted to promoting geology, following the writings and the paintings of Carlo Levi (a famous Italian artist, who suffered a political exile during the fascist era) [5].…”