Drone-based Survey to Mitigate Climate Change Impacts on Scotland’s Eroding Coastal Heritage

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Methods for Monitoring Heritage at Risk Sites in a Rapidly Changing Environment", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Scotland is a maritime nation and much of its archaeological heritage is located at the coast. This rich heritage is threatened by erosion, accelerated by climate change. Hundreds of sites are vulnerable to destruction, but the scale of the issue far outweighs available resources for investigation.

This paper presents ongoing doctoral research which combines drone-based recording with ground survey for site monitoring, vulnerability assessment and coastal change analysis. High-resolution recording will inform site management and prioritisation. Detailed survey of sites in different coastal environments will also examine erosion at a refined scale and create a distributed network of nodal points for the observation of climate change impacts on the coast. Local communities are involved in fieldwork and site selection, in order to engage the public in site documentation and monitoring of coastal change to demonstrate the threat of coastal loss, improve climate literacy and promote engagement with modern climate challenges.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Methods for Monitoring Heritage at Risk Sites in a Rapidly Changing Environment   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow