Geopark Malé Karpaty with strong scientific background

The Geopark Malé Karpaty, after being awarded the decree Geopark of the Slovak Republic, signed a Memorandum of Cooperation with representatives of important institutions with professional, scientific and academic focus –  State Geological Institute of Dionyz Stur, Earth Sciences Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, the Natural History Museum of the Slovak National Museum and the Faculty of Natural Sciences of the Comenius University in Bratislava.

For the development of the Malé Karpaty Geopark, the formalisation of such cooperation represents a significant step forward. This will bring a lot of new synthetic knowledge which can be used by the management of the geopark in the popularization of its territory, phenomena and science. An important activity of the geopark management also includes the implementation of environmental education and training based on the latest knowledge. The signed memorandum forms a highly qualified basis in this respect.

In the foreseeable future, it is expected that the Memorandum of Cooperation will be extended to other departmental organisations of the Ministry of the Environment of the Slovak Republic: Slovak Environmental Agency and the State Nature Conservancy (Malé Karpaty Protected Landscape Park). The Geopark will thus gain stronger support from professional and scientific institutions, which will further legitimize its efforts in the further development and operation of the area of interest, which is rare even on a European scale.

Photo: from left Jiří Vitáloš (chairman of the administrative board of the Geopark Malé Karpaty), Peter Fedor (dean of the Faculty of Natural Sciences, Comenius University), Igor Slaninka (director general of the State Geological Institute of Dionyz Stur), Ján Kautman (director of the Natural History Museum of the Slovak National Museum of Natural History), Jozef Michalík (representative of the Earth Sciences Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences).