28. Geomorphosites and Natural Hazards: Teaching the Importance of Geomorphology in Society.

Geomorphosites and geological landscapes areamong the most important tourist attractions of rural andmountain areas. In the past decades, especially thanks toseveral research and cultural projects on geological heritage,many regional and local authorities have started inventoryingand publicising their landscapes and sites of geological andgeomorphological interest publishing booklets, geotouristicmaps and equipping their territories with explanatory panels.Nevertheless, geology and geomorphology are able to occupythe head titles of the major newspapers or make the breakingnews on TV channels only when natural hazards hit thepopulation. Making the processes that shape the morphologiesat the Earth’s surface understandable to a wider public andhelping people to “read” the wide variety of signs and remnantsof recent or remote natural disasters might help to retainsociety’s memory of these phenomena and therefore minimisehuman and material losses. The geomorphological scars in thelandscape that remind, if adequately interpreted, past naturaland or human-induced disasters are ideal spots for geoenvironmentaleducation and should therefore be the subjectof a scientific programme able to exploit their didactic value.This paper reports some interesting examples of such sites inItaly.