Geological Conservation Review


The Geological Conservation Review is produced by the UK's Joint Nature Conservation Committee and is designed to identify those sites of national and international importance needed to show all the key scientific elements of the geological and geomorphological features of Britain. These sites display sediments, rocks, minerals, fossils, and features of the landscape that make a special contribution to an understanding and appreciation of Earth science and the geological history of Britain, which stretches back more than three billion years. The intention of the project, which was devised in 1974 by George Black and William Wimbledon working for the Governmental advisory agency, the Nature Conservancy Council, was activated in 1977. It aimed to provide the scientific rationale and information base for the conservation of geological SSSIs. The NCC and country conservation agencies were established in 1990 when JNCC became established and took over responsibility for managing the GCR site assessment process, and publishing accounts of accepted sites.
By the year 2000, over 3000 localities had been identified as qualifying for GCR standard. NCC and later JNCC, have published detailed site descriptions of the GCR localities. For part of the GCR Series of books, commercial publishers were involved, principally Chapman & Hall. To date 36 of the planned 45 volumes have been published, with volumes 15 to 36 being published by JNCC directly, and available for sale through the Natural History Book Service, Totnes.

GCR blocks

The GCR is broken down into 107 'blocks' whereby sites with a similarly themed interest are collected together and described in one of the published volumes described above. A block may contain anything from 2 to 140 sites:
Precambrian and Structural Geology
Igneous and Mineralogy
Palaeozoic Stratigraphy
Mesozoic-Tertiary Stratigraphy
Palaeontology
Quaternary Geology and Geomorphology
Geomorphology