Geological Heritage inventory of La Rioja (Spain). A small territory with a great geological diversity

Abstract

[EN] In 2021, the General Directorate of Environmental Quality and Water Resources (Government of La Rioja) commissioned the Geological and Mining Institute of Spain (IGME, CSIC) to carry out a new inventory of geological heritage of La Rioja. The inventory has been performed with the methodology of the Spanish Inventory of Sites of Geological Interest (IELIG) and has been integrated into its database (https://info.igme.es/ielig/). The antecedents of this task was the inventory carried out in 2007 by the GEOMARE consultancy for La Rioja and the inventory of the Iberian Range carried out in 2013 for IELIG. The new inventory of La Rioja include 65 sites of geological interest or geosites (19 new ones), which represents 1.6% of the geosites currently present in IELIG. Considering the small area of La Rioja (5,045 km2; 1% of Spain), that represents a relatively high number of geosites compared to the entire country (4,089 geosites in 505,990 km2).