Abandoned quarries of the Middle Dnipro region as promising natural geosites

The Middle Dnipro, or Prydniprovia, region, mostly represented by the Seredniodniprovskyi Megablock of the Ukrainian Shield and its connection with the Black Sea basin in the south and with the Dnipro-Donetsk Rift in the east, concentrates important objects of industrial extraction of many important types of mineral resources. A large number of open pits are used for their discovery and extraction, which – once exhausted – remain valuable sources of geological information and, accordingly, are objects of geological heritage. After cessation of mining, quarries can be used in various ways, among which attention is focused on their informational value, i.e. as carriers of geological knowledge regarding stratigraphy, tectonics, petrographic or lithological composition of the rocks, the validity of the age of rock complexes, and the presence of remains of fossil fauna and flora. Moreover, quarries provide an opportunity to collect samples of rocks and minerals for various types of analytical research, including various mineral resources. There is a general tendency to somewhat neglect the enormous amount of geological data that quarries contain, to quickly forget about this aspect of their use, and to give preference to their recreational or touristic value. Upon examining the issue, it was found that there is a lack of detailed scientific descriptions for the vast majority of quarries. Even when such information is present in geological reports, it is often difficult to utilize effectively. We have analyzed a large volume of the literary sources on the use of abandoned quarries in various countries of Europe and around the world, both in from the past and recent reports. First and foremost, the experience of utilizing quarries as valuable geological heritage sites or geosites was considered in order to preserve their informational value. This paper presents the results of the application of various methods in the survey of the quarries, including field methods with the use of its practical components, stratigraphic, paleontological, structural-tectonic, petrological and mineralogical, paleogeographic and others. The total number of abandoned quarries in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast has been fully accounted for, conditionally dividing them into large quarries or simply quarries, stone quarries (which include average-sized and small quarries, but mined for Precambrian crystalline rocks) and mines or clay pits (from which non-metallic mineral resources were extracted). Based on the conducted research, the characteristics of the most informative and important mining products are given for the first time.