THEME 5 – Geoparks and tourism

PRESENTATION – Poster by Gil Piekarz

TITLE: GEOTOURISTIC TRACK IN “ILHA DO MEL”, PARANÁ, BRAZIL

¹Gil Piekarz – gil@onda.com.br

² Antonio Liccardo – liccardo@ambienteimagem.com.br

³Rodolfo José Angulo – angulo@ufpr.br

⁴Maria Cristina de Souza – cristina@ufpr.br

^1,2MINEROPAR

^3,4Universidade Federal do Paraná

Ilha do Mel (Honey Island), with 2,600ha, is one among the three main tourist attractions of the state of Paraná, southern Brazil, with 93% of its area turned into ecological resort and state park. Placed on the mouth of Paranaguá Bay, the island is formed by rocky hills until 148m height and sandy plains. It presents an intense tourist visitation, mainly because of its scenical beauty and natural look. Easily accessible by boat, its landscape presents a rich and concentrated geological, historical, anthropological and biological content.

Outdoors about the geological context have been established in the three main points of visitation along the island, including the traditional 8km hiking among these points. In this stretch has been established the geotrack which presents a large set of coastal geological processes easily visible and highly didactic. These outdoors show the different environments of the island sedimentation with typical geological structures and marine paleolevels leading to the understanding of Ilha do Mel paleogeographic evolution since the maximum of the late Pleistocene marine transgression (120,000 years) until now.

Cares are also showed how to use and occupy the island, that, due to its localization, the environment presents high coastal mobility with intense processes of erosion and sedimentation. Visitors are showed also proterozoic migmatites outcrops that form the hills with fine views of geological structures and their compound. There are also dikes of diabase related to the opening of the Atlantic Ocean on the Jurassic whose main exposition compounds the “Gruta das Encantadas”, the island post card.

Scientific researches are constantly fulfilled in Ilha do Mel and the region is an area of legal environmental protection. The establishment of the geotourisc track represents a link between updated geological knowledge and the people using the already existing conscious tourism.

Keywords – Ilha do Mel; geotourism; geotrack; Paraná; Paranaguá Bay