Whenever coastal engineer Robert Nicholls looks outside one of his home’s windows, he can see the Hurst Castle Spit on the south coast of England slowly eroding across the sea. “In a way, Hurst Castle is a part of me, because I did all my Ph.D. work on the spit.” ​Although this particular castle doesn’t have an international heritage status, it inspired Nicholls to study how climate change and weather events threaten the survival of such sites across the globe. Now, Nicholls has co-created the first global high-resolution digital dataset of UNESCO World Heritage Sites located along coastlines. Together, the included sites cover more than 235 million hectares (~581 million acres).​ ​Nicholls and his colleagues say the database can be used as a tool to help assess vulnerabilities of  coastal sites that possess great natural and cultural significance, and local authorities can make them more resilient in the face of climate change and other threats posed by weather extremes. “The surprising thing, I suppose, was the number of sites in the coastal zone,” Nicholls, a professor of climate adaptation at the University of East Anglia, told Mongabay over a video call. The database, published in the journal Scientific Data in July, includes 386 locations and maps cultural landmarks; biocultural sites deemed to have both ecological and cultural value; and unique ecosystems, biodiversity fortresses and geological marvels. All are threatened by climate change and other environmental factors that might not be directly tied to it, such as erosion, according to co-author…This article was originally published on Mongabay

From Conservation news via This RSS Feed.