Identification, categorisation and protection of geoheritage sites of the cauvery basin, South India, for educational, research and geotourism purposes
International audienceGeoheritage sites are those sites identified and protected for their value in geoscience and aesthetics. Worldover, serious efforts are being made to identify, categorise and to protect such sites. A more or less complete stratigraphic record of Barremian-Danian along with diverse fossil, sedimentary structural and other features occur in the region bound between Vellar and Coleroon in South India. With the pace of rapid urbanisation developments and the mining activities in the vicinity, it is of public knowledge that the geologically important, unique archives of the past are being unscrupulously plundered and unless systematic documentation and sincere efforts of protection are initiated, these geological treasure troves will be lost forever. Given cognizance to all these, propose identification, protection and establishment of field museum sites under six categories, namely, sites of fossil locations, sites of natural exposures, sites of stratigraphic importance, sites of unique facies types, sites of excellent traverses and sites of newly excavated mine and other sections. We also propose to establish an online catalogue of important locales according to these six categories, creation of Web-GIS enabled interactive and informative kiosk containing basic information on these sites and making this resource an open-source model. Finally, this study suggests that the proposed field-museum encompassing the six-category sites may be named after Dr. M.S. Krishnan, the illustrious geologist of Geological Survey of India