Climate Change and Current Challenges for Landscapes and Cultural Heritage

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue will serve as a platform for the exchange of experiences among participants of the 28th conference in the series of garden art and historical dendrology titled “Climate Change and Current Challenges for Landscapes and Cultural Heritage”. This year, we would like to focus on an important discussion related to the climate change taking place in the world, with the identification of current problems and challenges in maintaining and preserving the cultural heritage of cities, villages, and open spaces. Raising this issue may significantly increase the awareness of the benefits associated with the protection of historical heritage and the vulnerability of and hazard to these monuments. We would like to focus on tangible cultural heritage, which includes cultural landscapes, historical buildings and gardens, archaeological sites, and historical sites. It is worth noting that such heritage plays an important role in economic, tourist, and recreational development, bringing significant benefits at the social, environmental, and economic level.

Climate change affects regions around the world and is associated with changes in average climate factors, as well as extreme weather events (e.g., storms, floods, heat waves). Moreover, an additional factor is the development of urban areas, which contributes to lowering the quality of water, increasing the number of impermeable surfaces, and creating urban heat islands. As the reports of IPCC (2019) and ICOMOS (2019) show, unfavorable phenomena may also threaten the survival of cultural heritage in the future. There are shortcomings in the policy of adaptation to climate change for heritage and shortages of technical guidelines in individual countries, which may contribute to the loss of valuable landscapes in the coming years. As stated in the March 2021 European Cultural Heritage Green Paper, “we firmly believe therefore that cultural heritage is a vector for achieving the long-term vision and policy goals of the European Union, including the European Green Deal. Cultural heritage is not just about preserving our past – it is about shaping our future”.

Taking this into account, we will focus on several thematic groups related to the city, historical gardens, rural areas, and other culturally valuable areas. The scale of changes and the increase in risk can be considered both in terms of the impact on architecture and vegetation, as well as climate changes and their impact on the destruction of forest stands. Additional issues include external factors, such as changes in spatial development plans and their impact on the heritage, including environmental impact assessment.

Dr. Jan K. Kazak
Dr. Katarzyna Hodor
Dr. Magdalena Wilkosz-Mamcarczyk
Guest Editors

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