GEOTOURISM AND GEOHERITAGE POTENTIALS: VISTAS AND UNIQUE OPPORTUNITIES OF SRI LANKA

Abstract

Geotourism is ‘tourism that focuses on geology and landscape as the basis for providing visitor engagement, learning, and enjoyment’. Geotourism and geo-heritage are relatively new form of tourism with considerable Sri Lanka and global growth potentials. Interest in geotourism is developing at a very rapid rate around the world. It is of great importance to support and enhance the global movement about geotourism generally and specifically into geo land mark included geo-heritage sites. The country like Sri Lanka represents an area rich with numerous geological and geomorphological formations which are excellent representatives of this area’s geodiversity since Archean eon to present. However, the geotourism potential of these geo sites still remains fully unrevealed and neglected. For many millennia, the prehistoric community has been concerned about the unrestricted appreciation of sites of geological or geomorphic interest. The features of geologic or geomorphic interests, based on folds, faults and topographic relief provide spectacular vistas and unique opportunities to learn about earth’s geologic processes and history. This should be our geological heritage, which represents the collective memory of the Mother Nature. Geotourism is essentially ‘geological tourism’. The geological element focuses on geology and landscape and includes both ‘form’, such as landforms, rock outcrops, rock types, sediments, soils and crystals, and ‘process’, such as volcanism, erosion, glaciation etc. The tourism element of geotourism includes tourists visiting, learning from, appreciating and engaging in geo sites. Thus, the nature of the abiotic geological heritage involves a sustainable, viable and responsible tourism development that enhances the wellbeing of the local communities.