Geodiversity: a new quantitative index for natural protected areas enhancement.

In spite of the excellent results achieved by international scientific community, the topic of quantitative assessment of geodiversity is still a matter of debate. Quantitative models by including the assessment of abiotic characteristics need to be improved based on quantitative estimates of geological and topographic components. In this work an evaluation of a digital Index of Geodiversity (Geodiversity Index, GI) is proposed using a GIS-based analysis. The test area is the Subasio Mountain Regional Park (Umbria – central Italy), an excellent site for the abiotic components evaluation.