Remote Sensing Methods and Approaches for Underwater Cultural Heritage Research and Management

Dear Colleagues,

A substantial quantity of prehistoric and historic cultural heritage is now underwater. Sea level fluctuations over the past millennia have periodically inundated coastal settlements that, for prehistoric and historic humans, were their gateways to marine resources as well as transport and migration routes. These natural factors integrated with associated pressures from anthropogenic activities formulate a constantly evolving environment, exposing the cultural resources in these zones to decay and destruction. At the same time, wreck sites, i.e., sunken ships and aircraft and any material associated with such vessels, are now submerged at various depths in both marine and inland waters. All these generate the necessity to plan, organize and implement actions to document and preserve the coastal and shallow submerged cultural material, assuring its accessibility and protection for future generations. Among recent technologies enabling the study of the marine environment, remote sensing technologies provide fast and cost-effective tools that are now being applied to the documentation and monitoring of underwater cultural and natural resources. These methods are indeed highly effective for the study of the UCH, providing baseline data for the management and protection of underwater cultural sites.

The exploration, documentation and monitoring of underwater cultural heritage (UCH) remain challenging, stimulating the research, design and development of new sensors, devices, techniques and methods to provide a continuous overview of the seabed environment and associated cultural features. Currently, a variety of sensing methods based on acoustics, optics, and electro-magnetics provide the maritime (geo)archaeological community with significant opportunities for re-defining the procedures for site mapping/formation, evaluation and monitoring. Active acoustic remote sensing encompasses a range of sonar systems including multibeam echosounders (MBES),  sidescan sonar (SSS) and sub-bottom profilers (SBP) for mapping underwater cultural and natural resources. Optical sensing technologies applied to UCH include underwater RGB and hyperspectral imaging for object inspection and reconstruction, while electro-magnetic technologies are used for underwater metal detection and to reconstruct the buried built environment in marine coastal and very shallow submerged areas.

This Special Issue focuses on underwater remote sensing technologies and methodological approaches that are currently used for the investigation, documentation, and monitoring of UCH. Researchers and authors are invited to submit studies covering different uses of remote sensing and geophysical methodologies by different sensors and platforms for the characterization and mapping of seabed archaeology and underwater cultural landscapes. Multisource data integration (e.g., bathymetry, backscatter and visual inspection) and multiscale approaches are particularly welcome. Topics of interest for this Special Issue include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Acoustic remote sensing methods for the characterization and mapping of UCH;
• Geophysical methods for maritime and underwater CH research;
• Coastal and offshore geophysical imaging of buried CH;
• Lidar technologies for coastal and nearshore CH research;
• Underwater photogrammetry;
• Satellite remote sensing for coastal and marine CH research;
• Development of sensors and ICT/IoT tools for monitoring and interpretation of UCH;
• Spatial modeling of seabed archaeological targets/structures;
• Automated methods for digital classification and mapping of UCH;
• Marine remote sensing techniques/technologies for monitoring of UCH;
• Marine geoarchaeological research;
• Underwater hyperspectral imaging of UCH.

Dr. Crescenzo Violante
Dr. Nikos Papadopoulos
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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• underwater and maritime cultural heritage
• underwater cultural landscape
• underwater and maritime geoarchaeology
• underwater acoustic remote sensing
• marine archaeo-geophysics
• electrical resistivity tomography
• underwater photogrammetry
• satellite remote sensing
• underwater hyperspectral imaging