Nisyros Volcanic Island: A Geosite through a Tailored GIS Story

The volcanic island of Nisyros (Greece) is here presented as it presents unique characteristics being a Quaternary volcano in the eastern Aegean Sea, composed of volcanic rocks, and featuring a central caldera that is surrounded by volcanic domes and thick lavas. Its history is strongly connected to the volcano impressing the visitors with steaming hydrothermal craters, intensive smell of sulfur and fumarolic gases, and hot springs. Due to its morphology and geographical position, its cultural and historical heritage has been unchanged in time, bequeath to the island plenty of churches, monasteries with hagiographic frescoes, castles, caves, and spas. To present the geodiversity, the cultural environment, and the biodiversity of this geosite, a relatively new geographic approach was used, ESRI Story Maps. Being web-based applications, they are widespread as an interactive responsive tool used for spatial data communication and dissemination, by combining thematic 2D and 3D webmaps, narrative text, and multimedia content. Such applications can be an ideal way for presenting the available information of places characterized as geosites or protected areas worldwide, providing quick access to the available information to a broader, non-technical audience, developing the interest, and possibly motivating the public to learn more or visit them

Corinth Gulf Story Map: Enhancing Public Awareness in Natural and Anthropogenic Environment using Interactive GIS Applications

Story maps are widespread as an interactive tool used for science and spatial data communication, information and dissemination. A web-based application using story mapping technology is presented here to highlight places of interest around Corinth Gulf (Greece), a new addition in Natura 2000 areas. A tailored story map that combines thematic webmaps and scenes (3D webmaps) generated through a Geographic Information System (GIS) having a great impact on web-based visual presentations with narrative text and multimedia content was created to highlight the geological and cultural environment of the area around Corinth Gulf