Inventory of the Geological Heritage of the State of Rio Grande do Norte, NE of Brazil

The Earth landscapes were not always as what they present themselves today, thanks to the interaction with the internal and external dynamics of the Earth. Thus, it is clear that the rocks are true “files” where what can informally be called “key files” capable of telling the history of a territory are stored. Threats against outcrop protection demand urgent management actions. Because of it, making an inventory of the geological heritage of a place makes it possible to delimit these places of interest and through a quantitative assessment to support measures for the geoconservation of this natural heritage. The present work consists of the first steps of the elaboration of an inventory of the geological heritage in the state of Rio Grande do Norte (RN), northeast of Brazil, and one of the first state inventories in progress in the country. In this text, it is exposed how the potential geosites were selected based on different bibliographic sources, filtered according to their uniqueness or regional representativeness, to then be organized in a uniform database, with general information about each point for consultation by the scientific community. Cartographic and graphic products were also generated to represent the information obtained in each location of geological interest. This study can be constantly updated and aims to direct future work on the inventory of geological heritage or with emphasis on specific topics such as geomorphological, paleontological, and mineralogical in RN.