Márton Pál

Eötvös Loránd University · Institute of Cartography and Geoinformatics

Geological and scenic values of locations are the non-living curiosities that can be preserved and popularized a lot easier using the institutional background of geotourism, such as geoparks. UNESCO Global Geoparks Network is responsible for protecting and fostering natural, scenic and cultural values and especially geosites that are the exciting v...

Assessment is the initial step for experts on geoheritage and geotourism when designating geosites in a certain area. During this process, geologically interesting outcrops, formations and places are examined with the use of different criteria to see if they are suitable for geoconservation and geotourism purposes. A quantitative assessment method-...

The aesthetic beauty of a landscape is an integral value reflected in artistic inspiration. Science, in contrast, tries to quantify the landscape using various methods. Of these, geodiversity indices have been found to be a useful approach, and this geomorphological diversity is characterized through derivatives made from digital terrain models (DT...

Geodiversity is the variety of natural elements that are excluded from biodiversity, such as: geological, geomorphological, and soil features including their properties, systems, and relationships. Geodiversity assessment measures these features, emphasising the characteristics and physical fragility of the examined areas. In this study, a quantita...

Geodiversity and geosite assessments precede geoheritage and geotourism utilisation. The process first determines the geodiversity value of an area (based on geoscientific attributions) and then the geotourism potential of the available sites. As a result, significant geosites can be identified, which are the bases of protection and tourism purpose...

Geographical names or toponyms are indispensable elements of most map types. They help map readers to identify objects on the field and provide information about the geographical thinking of certain groups of people. However, in a broader, non-cartographic aspect, toponyms determine our everyday life as we use them when travelling, walking, plannin...

Geotourism is a branch of tourism that primarily presents the inanimate and spectacular objects of nature that sustainably have scientific and tourism significance. Although in Hungary, activities connected to it are not widely spread yet, the sector is dynamically developing. Dissemination of geotourism values is primarily concentrated in geoparks...

The assessment, evaluation, and visualisation of geodiversity is a useful tool when trying to consider geoscientific values for e.g. establishing a geopark or any geo-related tourism attraction. A comprehensive geodiversity analysis and mapping of the whole area of Hungary has not yet been carried out, even though there are two UNESCO Global Geopar...

Nowadays, geotourism is a more and more widely known branch of tourism. Owing to this, it is organically connected to modern science communication solutions, since one of its main goals is to protect geoscience values and present them sustainably to the general public. In recent years, in the scientific community, we have been able to come across e...

Geodiversity and geoheritage studies are multidisciplinary, drawing from all sides of geosciences and extending them into the humanities, geoarchaeology, spatial planning, territorial and risk management, economics, tourism, or culture using integrated and interdisciplinary research approaches. During the last three decades, geodiversity and geoher...

During the last years, the close links of geodiversity and geoheritage to culture and human society are being widely discussed. These encompass topics such as the relevance of geodiversity within concept of ecosystem services, different scale and expression of geoheritage-cultural heritage links, implementing the geodiversity into the landscape and...

Today, integration into automated systems has become a priority in the development of remote sensing sensors carried on drones. For this purpose, the primary task is to achieve real-time data processing. Increasing sensor resolution, fast data capture and the simultaneous use of multiple sensors is one direction of development. However, this poses...

The book presents both thematic and geographical variety of approaches to geodiversity and geoheritage research. Besides the conceptual chapters focused on geodiversity and geoheritage's links to biodiversity, culture or sustainable tourism and development, the volume includes case studies that reflect an integrated view on heritage, conservation o...

The surroundings of Sopron, a more than thousand-year-old town in western Hungary, is rich in both geological and cultural values, and major tourism investments are currently underway in the area. The protection of living nature is ensured by the Fertő-Hanság National Park and the Biosphere Reserve in the eastern part of the region, the landscape p...

The work and process of establishing a geopark or a nature protection area highlighting the scientific information and connections to the everyday life of the unliving environment are usually preceded by geodiversity and geosite assessments. Geodiversity evaluation takes earth scientific attributes of a certain area into account and presents a gene...

Geographical names or toponyms are indispensable elements of most map types. They help map readers to identify objects on the field and provide information about the geographical thinking of certain groups of people. However, in a broader, non-cartographic aspect, toponyms determine our everyday life as we use them when travelling, walking, plannin...

Several studies are concerned with assessing radiation contamination from accidents such as Chornobyl and Fukushima. However, radioactivity can also come from natural sources, either terrestrial or cosmic. These natural sources have not been properly surveyed and documented at some locations yet. The low-cost Safecast sensor used in our research wa...

Geodiversity is the variety of earth scientific elements that can be distinguished from each other based on their unique characteristics. Examining the occurrence frequency of geological, relief, pedological and hydrological factors of an area relieves its geoscientific complexity and relates to the geotourism and geoheritage potential. Geosites, t...

Geoheritage is becoming popular due to the wide range of educational and promotional opportunities. One way to promote geoscientific heritage is geotourism, which helps society to explore the values of the abiotic environment. Geotourism is linked to geoparks, where sustainable tourism, geoconservation, and geoheritage management are the most impor...

Geosite assessment is the process of inventorying and valuing inanimate natural sites that are important from an earth science point of view and may also be of interest to tourists. These inventories are necessary for the establishment of a geopark and are created through comprehensive geosite mapping. The assessment considers the scientific and to...

It may seem strange, but the next generation of geological maps could be produced not for geologists, but for the non-expert public! In Hungary, as in most countries, geological maps were created to help find economically important raw materials. However, updates of outdated maps are becoming increasingly rare. Nowadays, exploration geologists do n...

Geotourism is a relatively new sector in tourism, in which visitors are offered earth scientific knowledge when visiting spectacular locations (geosites or geotopes) and participating in various organized activities there. Areas and sites with high geological-geomorphological relevance are usually managed by national parks, geoparks or other types...

Geodiversity assessment is a key element of geoconservational activities. It reveals the variety of earth scientific features of the examined areas highlighting the zones that may be further analysed for scientific and tourism purposes. Many countries and researchers have already developed assessment methods, which were usually common in using spec...

The Mátra Mts has been one of the most frequented tourist destinations in Hungary for over a century. Famous wine regions, thermal waters, rich cultural heritage, and high natural diversity attract tourist even from other countries. Being the highest mountain range in Hun-gary, it has been popular among people who prefer winter sports and various n...

Geodiversity is the variety of mainly abiotic natural elements that can be distinguished according to some specific characteristic by the various disciplines of earth sciences. Examining the frequency of occurrence of these geological, geomorphological and soil factors provides an opportunity to identify the specific characteristics, disciplinary s...

The Mátra Mts has been one of the most frequented tourist destinations since the second half of the 19th century. This area – the highest mountain range in Hungary – offers a wide variety of free-time activities, geographical and cultural values. Because of these attractions, the tourism importance of the Mátra Mts has been recognised relatively ea...

Geodiversity is the natural range of elements in the physical environment. The relationships, properties, and systems of geoscientific features have an impact not only on the natural world but also on cultural and societal aspects of life. Geodiversity can be considered as a quantitative variable that is unevenly distributed all over the world. Thi...

UAV imagery has a big role in environmental mapping: various indices regarding plant health, soil condition or geological objects can be determined, or 3D models can be built for accurate measurements. Automatic vectorization of satellite images is widely applied nowadays for land coverage determination purposes. However, larger resolution UAV imag...

Hiking is one of the most popular outdoor sports activities in Hungary. Despite not having many mountainous areas, a wide network of hiking trails crosses the country’s landscapes. As online tourist maps and thematic mobile applications become more and more popular among hikers, the role of paper-based, analogue tourist maps decreases. However, no...

A drónos távérzékelés és fotogrammetria a 21. század egyik leggyorsabban terjedő és fejlődő tudományterülete. A pilóta nélküli légi járművek (Unmanned Aircraft – UA, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle – UAV), illetve légijármű-rendszerek (Unmanned Aerial Systems – UAS) fejlett adatnyerési lehetőségei és az ezekből fakadó sokrétű alkalmazhatóság révén számos g...

The use of thematic cartography in earth sciences is a frequent task for researchers when publishing. When creating a map, researchers intend to communicate important spatial information that enhances, supplements or replaces textual content. Not only visual but substantial requirements exist for those who create maps. Cartographic visualisation ha...

The Mátra Mts has been one of the most frequented tourist destinations in Hungary for over a century. Famous wine regions, thermal waters, rich cultural heritage, and high natural diversity attract tourist even from other countries. Being the highest mountain range in Hungary, it has been popular among people who prefer winter sports and various na...

Az elmúlt évtizedekben jelentősen megnőtt a geoturizmus és az ehhez kapcsolódó szabadidős tevékenységek iránti igény. A földtudományok népszerűsítésének kézzelfogható elemei azok az élettelen természeti objektumok, amelyek valamilyen földtudományos, vagy akár kulturális, történelmi jelentőséggel bírnak. Ezeket geotópoknak, geohelyszíneknek nevezzük...

The use of aerial photography in topography has started in the first decades of the 20th century.Remote sensed data have become indispensable for cartographers and GIS staff when doing large-scale mapping: especially topographic, orienteering and thematic maps. The use of UAVs(unmanned aerial vehicles) for this purpose has also become widespread fo...

The quantification of geodiversity has become an important task for researchers just after the formulation of the definition. For ‘measuring’ the values of the physical environment, many quantitative assessment models were presented in the past decades. The common characteristic of these methods is that they use thematic (geological, geomorphologic...

A tudományos kutatások földrajzi térben értelmezendő eredményeit, valamint bármely egyéb térbeli tulajdonságokkal bíró szakadatot a földtudományok szakemberei a tematikus kartográfia eszközeivel jelenítik meg szakmai közleményeikben. Emiatt a különféle tudományos publikációk, folyóiratok és szakkönyvek térképeinek szerkesztésekor a pontos és megbíz...

Geotourism has developed rapidly in the last decades. Geosites are the most interesting inanimate formations on Earth, and geotourism and geoheritage facilitate the preservation and popularization of their value. The processes of our planet can be well-interpreted through them. The UNESCO Global Geoparks Network is responsible for gathering, protec...

Thematic cartography is a major tool for earth sciences to present research results about various spatial characteristics. When used correctly, maps enrich the content of publications. This study focuses on the quality of map use in geoscientific publications. Maps of geology, geography, geophysics, meteorology and cartography were assessed from Hu...

There is a struggle nowadays to make traffic less dependent on people. Numerous traffic situations and elements highlight the importance of a background navigational database in the memory of autonomous cars to reach higher safety. The autonomous car needs the same amount of information as a human driver. The background software ought to work synch...

Autonomous vehicles are well known today for many reasons. On the one hand, it is a technologically big (and interesting) challenge, on the other hand it raises several legal issues. We focused on a technical thing: we created a theoretical advisory support system which helps driving autonomous cars. This system may be needed if the self-driving ca...

To communicate the results of a research or scientific facts and theories concerning spatial characteristics, every fields of geoscience use thematic cartography to represent spatial information. Because of this, journals, books and other publications about earth sciences has always needed accurate, reliable and clear methods of map visualization....

Cartography and GIS (Geographical Information System) are interdisciplinary fields of science. Both of them can be used to foster and help a large number of human activities, including geotourism. With using GIS, or simply means of graphic design, cartographic materials are regularly produced in geoparks all around the world to communicate with vis...

A self-driving car is a vehicle that is able to perceive its surroundings and navigate in it without human action. Radar sensors, lasers, computer vision and GPS technologies help it to drive individually (Figure 1). They interpret the sensed information to calculate routes and navigate between obstacles and traffic elements. Sufficiently accurate...

Geoheritage is the collective noun for the spectacular phenomena of geological and geomorphological landmarks that have to be preserved but also exploited by tourism in sustainable ways. The demonstration and preservation of these landmarks – the geosites – are often done in a geopark, an open area where they can be visited, and interesting facts c...

Az utóbbi évtizedek során világszerte növekvő népszerűségnek örvendenek a tudományos tartalmat hordozó kikapcsolódási lehetőségek. Ez fokozottan igaz a földtudományos vonatkozású eseményekre: különböző túrák és rendezvények során egyre többen ismerik meg Földünk geológiai és geomorfológiai örökségét. A földtani örökségvédelem szerepe az egyedi term...

Az önjáró autók képesek érzékelni környezetüket és a radarok, lézerek, illetve a GNSS és a számítógépes látás segítségével navigálhatnak benne. Az észlelt információkat az útvonalak megtervezésére, és a különböző közlekedési elemek közti navigálásra használják. A GPS eszközök megkönnyítik a navigálást a járművezetők számára. Bár segítségünkre vanna...

Geoheritage protection and geotourism management both use geosite inventories of a particular area, which should include the most spectacular, significant and vulnerable sites. In the preliminary phase of our research we applied GAM (Geosite Assessment Model [1]) and M-GAM (Modified Geosite Assessment Model [2]), two quantitative methods to determi...

Self-driving cars are able to sense their surroundings and navigate in it with the help of radar, lasers, computer vision and GNSS. The perceived information is used to plan routes and navigate between the various elements of transport. GPS devices make navigation easier for vehicle drivers. Although they help to reach our destination, today's syst...

Geological and scenic values of locations are the non-living curiosities that can be preserved and popularized a lot easier using the institutional background of geotourism, such as geoparks. UNESCO Global Geoparks Network is responsible for protecting and fostering natural, scenic and cultural values and especially geosites that are the exciting v...

The genre of geotourist map combines the characteristics of traditional tourist maps and geological/geomorphological maps. Its scale varies from large to middle and there exist several subdivisions. Categories can be created based on the scale and the thematic content. From the aspect of making these maps, there lie several differences in the compi...

Geotourism has been a fast-growing sector of tourism in the past decades. It focuses on geologic and scenic values of a location (geosite), so these can be preserved and popularized easier. The objects of geoturism are the outcrops: these are the main tourist destinations and carry the visible geological information. Thus, the most important task w...

In the past few decades, geotourism has developed rapidly. It is a relatively modern sector of tourism that focuses on geologic and scenic values of a location. With the help of geotourism, these values can be preserved and popularized a lot easier. Geosites are the visible physical elements that this field of tourism concentrates on. UNESCO Global...

In the past few decades, geotourism has developed rapidly. It is a relatively modern sector of tourism that focuses on geologic and scenic values of a location. With the help of geotourism, these values can be preserved and popularized easier. Geosites are the visible physical elements that this field of tourism concentrates on. UNESCO Global Geopa...