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 Our Projects

County Geodiversity Sites (CGS)

The Geological Society of Norfolk (GSN) works with Norfolk Geodiversity Partnership (NGP) to run a geodiversity site designation group. In January, 2011, the group voted to change the name of these sites from RIGS to CGS. RIGS stood for Regionally Important Geological/geomorphological Sites and is a name that has now been replaced throughout most of Britain. The national body (previously UKRIGS) is now called GeoconservationUK.

The main purpose of County Geodiversity Sites is for use as educational and research resources, but the process of designation also serves to alert land-owners and planners that site has significant geological or geomorphological (geodiversity) features. This is part of a nation-wide site designation process and has the support of Natural England. The sites are the geological equivalent to County Wildlife Sites.

The CGS group holds regular meetings to evaluate proposed sites and welcomes suggestions for potential sites from GSN members and landowners. To date the group has, with the help of GSN members and various other organisations, managed to achieve CGS status for seven sites and is negotiating with landowners regarding others.

NGP has also commissioned a desk based geo-site audit, and sites from this audit are currently being checked on the ground, part of this process is to assess their potential as CGS. This ground-truthing work is being achieved by using both commissioned and volunteer work. The information on the audit is available via the NGP website at https://sites.google.com/view/norfolkgeodiversity/action-ngap/1-understanding and a summary of sites is available at https://sites.google.com/view/norfolkgeodiversity/home/norfolk-geodiversity-sites, with more information about protected sites available at https://sites.google.com/view/norfolkgeodiversity/action-ngap/3-protecting/protected/cgs