Geodiversity: theory and applications

The course aims at introducing students to the concept of geodiversity and at giving them methods and techniques to describe and analyze the natural elements of the physical landscape and the main climate factors driving their evolution. In particular we will focus on detecting, mapping, describing and analyzing the physical elements and the natural resources of each environment (from mountains to coastal areas), their level of integrity and conservation, their relations with landscape and climate evolution and with the human presence and use (if any).

At the end of the course, the students are expected to be able to develop autonomously a project in the field of the earth sciences focused on the evaluation of the geodiversity at local or at regional scale. They will be able to apply methods and techniques explained in the course and tested during the practical activities and they will properly discuss the obtained results also with fruitful comparison with the available literature.