Cultural georesources: Two study cases to promote tourism in the northern landscapes of Tierra del Fuego, Argentina

A methodology to assess cultural georesources (CG) to promote tourism and leisure in a semiarid, steppe region of southern South America is presented. Two localities, Cabo Peñas at the coast, and Amalia shallow-lake inland, were analysed in terms of geodiversity, archaeological/historical record and recreational/tourist use. The methodological framework applied allows us to select, describe, hierarchize and validate CG among a list of several. The CG description includes the geological/geomorphological and cultural aspects as well as the available tourist infrastructure and equipment resulting from field work and surveys. The two CG herein presented are representative of different natural environments that were inhabited by native populations since the Middle Holocene times and nowadays have different level of accessibility and different degree of knowledge among the local people. A parametric assessment including the 3 analysed axes was contrasted to the perceptions of the key actors of the territory through a participative workshop. The hierarchization shows that Peñas cape is homogeneously ranked in the three axes while Amalia shallow-lake reveals that the geological/geomorphological and archaeological/historical axes are better valued than the recreational/tourist one. The validation step of the framework evidences the high interest the CG arouse among local people in order to visit and learn about them and a different level of identification towards them, that is, high for Peñas cape and low for Amalia shallow-lake, probably because of their distance to the city where these people live. The concept of CG offers the possibility to broaden the value of several geodiversity elements and gives relevance to the result of the human being's approach to the physical environment in the present times but also in the past. The methodology proposed to assess CG proved to be useful to reach an integral and deep analysis that takes into account scientific information and people's perceptions.