| Abstract |
Geomorphological heritage and landscapes have one common characteristic: their existence de-pends on a certain socio-cultural context and on the subjective view of different observers. In-deed, considering landforms or portions of land as heritage results from a process of “heritage making” (“patrimonialisation”, Di Méo 2008): an object is considered as heritage when the values assigned by society or by some actors are suffi-ciently important to justify its preservation and transmission to future generations. From the per-spective of geomorphologists, the central value of a landform is its geoscientific interest (Grandgirard 1997; Reynard 2004), i.e. its interest in understanding geomorphological processes, reconstructing the formation and the evolution of a landform, etc. The values that justify the her-itage recognition of a landform may also be relat-ed to its beauty (aesthetic value), its cultural in-terest or its ecological value. A geomorphological landscape refers to a landscape whose geomorphological component is of heritage interest. Some landscapes have gained international recognition for their geosci-entific value, particularly the 93 sites included in the UNESCO World Heritage List that meet crite-rion viii – “to be outstanding examples repre-senting major stages of earths history, including the record of life, significant on-going geological processes in the development of landforms, or significant geomorphic or physiographic fea-tures”. Obviously besides their scientific interest, most of these sites are also landscapes of particu-larly high aesthetic value. As part a PhD thesis in progress (Bussard, in prep.), we first assessed the heritage value of four geomorphological landscapes in southern Iceland from a geomorphological perspective and, then, we conducted a series of interviews to see to what extent the heritage values assigned by different local stakeholders overlap with this assessment. The four geomorphological land-scapes are Skaftafell Glacier, Laki craters, Torfa-jökull caldera in the vicinity of Landmannalaugar and Breiðamerkur Glacier and its proglacial mar-gin, including Jökulsárlón. |
