Climate Change and Cultural Heritage: developing a landscape-scale vulnerability framework to measure and manage the impact of climate change on coastal historic landscapes

The impacts of climate change, including sea-level rise, coastal erosion, and flooding, have the
potential to damage or destroy archaeology and cultural heritage assets. Most studies that have
modelled or measured the impact of coastal and climatic processes on archaeology have focussed
on archaeological features as discrete entities rather than as part of the historic landscape. The
results, therefore, can only inform a comparison between single sites and do not reveal threats to
the wider cultural heritage and historic landscape.
This thesis develops a Landscape Vulnerability Framework, which uses several methodologies to
establish the vulnerability of the historic landscape to climate change and identify sustainable
management approaches. Each step of the framework is tested on the Dysynni valley and estuary
(west Wales), which acts as a pilot study for the methods being developed.
Historic Landscape Characterisation characterises the historic landscape into definable areas with
similar form, function and history. This is based on an analysis of aerial photographs, modern and
historic maps, archaeological database records, archive research, and geophysical surveys.
A two-step vulnerability index is then developed to determine the vulnerability of the historic
landscape to climate change. The first step assesses the vulnerability of archaeological sites and
landscape features to climate change. The second step uses the results of the first vulnerability
index, as well as spatial data on the landscape character areas and the threat in question, to
calculate the vulnerability of each landscape character area to climate change.
The results of the vulnerability index are used to inform a sustainability assessment of different
potential coastal and flood-risk management options. A multi-attribute value theory is used to
calculate the level of impact that different management approaches would have on the most
vulnerable historic landscape character areas, the local ecology, economy and community.

The Landscape Vulnerability Framework developed in this thesis can be applied to landscapes in the
UK and beyond. It will provide a simple, well defined method for policy-makers and heritage
organisations to effectively consider the vulnerability of the historic landscape to climate change,
and inform a holistic, proactive approach to the sustainable management of cultural heritage