Title: Adapting to climate change: threats and opportunities for landscape and cultural heritage management
Chair:
Em. Prof. Eleni Maistrou & Dr. Miltiadis Lazoglou
National Technical University of Athens, Greece
Abstract/Description:
From shifting weather patterns and bioclimatic zones, to altering earth systems, climate change imposes an imminent threat to multiple sectors globally. Landscapes, as the physical spaces in which these environmental changes occur, are crucial for the holistic understanding of the planet’s processes and our ability to map the future. Cultural heritage sites are of particular importance in landscape study, as they comprise pillars of our society’s identity.
Landscapes can be understood at many scales, from a small area perceived at the turn of a head, to entire geographic regions with similar characteristics. These scales are interrelated, with changes in one feeding changes in another. Climate change assessment and adaptation is necessary at all scales, so then is developing the tools to do so.
The concept of landscapes encapsulates cultural heritage sites as part of the natural and built environment. These sites may pertain to not only monuments and museum collections, but also larger archaeological sites, such as entire traditional settlements and historic towns. Their unique architectural structures and distinct components of public space, serve social purposes and convey particularised information. Thus, it is of utmost importance to safeguard them from the impacts of climate change.
This special session invites papers concerning the aforementioned topics, with a specific focus on cultural heritage sites and landscape modelling, assessment, and planning. Contributions may encompass the identification and evaluation of threats climate change poses on archaeological sites, historic towns, and settlements, and provide information over methodologies and proposals for landscape adaptation.
The following may serve as descriptive examples of the contributions:
- Modeling bioclimate change, and / or its interaction with landscape change.
- Methodologies for assessing the past and present conditions of key landscape change factors, such as hydrology, erosion, fire regime, agriculture, and urbanization.
- The methodology for developing studies about the adaptation of cultural heritage sites to expected climate change impacts.
- The investigation of the correlation between urban and regional planning and landscape adaptation to climate change, which encompasses the vulnerability assessment and preservation of cultural heritage sites.
- Adaptation methodologies and measures, in conjunction with disaster prevention interventions, at legal, institutional, financial, and technical levels.
This special session is organized in the framework of the LIFE-IP AdaptInGR- Boosting the implementation of adaptation policy across Greece, LIFE17 IPC/GR/000006.