Riserva naturale dei Ciciu del Villar
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Riserva naturale dei Ciciu del Villar
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 A Ciciu group |
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| location | Cottian Alps , Piedmont , Italy | |
| surface | 63.84 ha | |
| WDPA ID | 64454 | |
| Geographical location | 44 ° 30 ' N , 7 ° 23' E | |
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| Sea level | from 650 m to 950 m | |
| Setup date | 1989 | |
The Riserva naturale dei Ciciu del Villar is a 63.84 hectare nature reserve set up in 1989 in the Cottian Alps southwest of Turin , more precisely between Dronero and Busca in the Mairatal . It is managed by the Ente di gestione del Parco naturale del Marguareis and is located at Villar San Costanzo , more precisely at Costa Pragamonti in the Upper Italian Val Maira , as it is called locally, between 650 and 950 m above sea level. There is a visitor center (Centro visite) extending under the geowatching (an analog form to terms such as whale watching or bird watching , but on the other hand strives to the formation of lay, so whale or bird watching) for monitoring and protecting a hand.
The area serves to protect the “erosion columns”, “stone mushrooms” or “earth pyramids” that rise at the foot of Monte San Bernardo and are called “puppets” or “jumping jacks” (ciciu) in Piedmontese. They have been legendarily interpreted as a hundred Roman soldiers who persecuted a saint, were cursed and turned into stones. 479 of these erosion products were counted in 2000 on an area of 25 ha. Most of them are no more than 2 m high, but their height varies between 50 cm and 10 m, their diameter near the ground between about one and seven meters. The extremely hard "hat" can be up to 8 m in diameter. While this consists of gneiss , the base of the "mushroom" consists of 90% loam and sand and 10% clay , plus small amounts of quartz , gneiss, baked with silicon and iron oxide. The latter gives the ciciu their characteristic reddish color.
The ciciu arose during and after the last glacial period . At that time, the glaciers were melting and the Faussimagna River , which flows into the Maira , carried enormous masses of rock and mud down into the valley. The feet of the resulting mushroom-shaped objects contained large amounts of ferrous material. At the same time, the rock masses freed from the ice fell down into the valley, some of them got into the Faussimagna. Then the terrain was lifted by tectonic movements. The overlying rocks, predominantly gneiss of the Dora Maira massif , protected the softer rocks below from further erosion or slowed them down.
Flora and fauna
Above all, the downy oak and chestnut grow in the protected area , along with around 300 other plant species.
The fauna includes many species of birds including nuthatch , lesser spotted woodpecker and green woodpecker (these three types of hot picchio muratore , rosso minore and verde ), but also hoods , blue and tailed Tit , summer and Goldcrest . There are also buzzards , peregrine falcons , little and tawny owls and barn owls .
Mammals are mainly represented by the dormouse , but the red fox , wild boar , roe deer as well as weasel , stone marten and European badger are also frequently sighted.
entrance
The Dormouse , here ghiro called, is common in the reserve
Web links
- Site of the protected area
- Dossier ( Memento of December 4, 2007 in the Internet Archive ), edited by TorinoScienza, archive.org, December 4, 2007
Remarks
- ^ Area protetta , Riserva naturale dei Ciciu del Villar.
- ↑ Matteo Garofano: Geowatching, a term for the popularization of Geological Heritage , in: Geoheritage 7.1 (2015) 25-32.
- ^ Alberto Costamagna: Studio su un geotopo della bassa Val Maira: le piramidi d'erosione di Villar San Costanzo , in: Atti della Accademia delle scienze di Torino: Classe di scienze fisiche, matematiche e naturali 134 (2000) 87-98.
- ↑ Gianni Farneti: 1000 oasi e parchi naturali da vedere in Italia , Rizzoli, Rome, S. 42nd