Coastal heritage, global climate change, public engagement, and citizen science
Date
14/04/2020Keywords
Metadata
Show full item recordAltmetrics Handle Statistics
Altmetrics DOI Statistics
Abstract
Climate change is threatening an uncalculated number of archaeological sites globally, totalling perhaps hundreds of thousands of culturally and paleoenvironmentally significant resources. As with all archaeological sites, they provide evidence of humanity’s past and help us understand our place in the present world. Coastal sites, clustered at the water’s edge, are already experiencing some of the most dramatic damage due to anthropogenic climate change; and the situation is predicted to worsen in the future. In the face of catastrophic loss, organizations around the world are developing new ways of working with this threatened coastal resource. This paper uses three examples, from Scotland, Florida and Maine, to highlight how new partnerships and citizen science approaches are building communities of practice to better manage threatened coastal heritage. It compares methods on either side of the Atlantic and highlights challenges and solutions. The approaches are applicable to the increasing number of heritage sites everywhere at risk from climate change; the study of coastal sites thus helps society prepare for climate change impacts to heritage worldwide.
Citation
Dawson , T , Hambly , J , Kelley , A , Lees , W & Miller , S 2020 , ' Coastal heritage, global climate change, public engagement, and citizen science ' , Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America , vol. 117 , no. 15 , pp. 8280-8286 . https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1912246117
Publication
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0027-8424Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © 2020 the Author(s). This work has been made available online in accordance with publisher policies or with permission. Permission for further reuse of this content should be sought from the publisher or the rights holder. This is the author created accepted manuscript following peer review and may differ slightly from the final published version. The final published version of this work is available at https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1912246117
Collections
Items in the St Andrews Research Repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.