Report on  participation at the  9th International ProGEO Symposium, Chęciny, Poland, 2018
Martina Stupar, PP5;  Institute of the Republic of Slovenia for Nature Conservation

The ProGEO Symposium took place in The Centre of Geoeducation,  an extraordinary geotouristic place, opened ion 2012 situated in the Holy Cross Archeo – Geological Trail in Geopark Kielce http://geopark-kielce.pl/en/.  Here, through nature and play, you can learn about the history of the Earth inscribed in rocks. 

The scientific programme  of symposium included three days of oral presentations (plenary sessions), poster sessions and two thematic workshops. In the Poster session “Geoconservation for science, education, and tourism”  I represent a poster titled  “Recommendations for visitors in Geoparks” by authors Martina Stupar and  dr. Jana Laganis, where basic informations on Danube Geotour project as outgoing Interreg Danube Transnational project were given. To explain the most important rules and to present rare and endangered geosites, minerals and fossils in Geoparks we produced three different posters which are titled “Minerals”, “Fossils” and “Geosites”. One side of these posters presents photographs from eight Geoparks, partners in the GeoTour, and on the other side, the recommendations and rules for visitors are explained in a very simple way with illustrations.  The most important message of the posters is, that the visitors must act responsibly and respectfully with geological heritage, because it is unrepeatable and represents an important part of each geopark’s identity. At that occasion all three posters were available to the public. The feedback of the participants of symposium was very positive, the idea of simple explained recommendations with a lot of photographs received a lot of congratulations.

Fig 1: The Centre of geoeducation (M.Stupar)

Fig 2: At the poster section (A.Popa)

Fig 3: The participants and also partners in GeoTour project with posters. (D.Popa)