Panel #3 | Informing Action

11 Apr 2016
4:00 pm - 5:30 pm
Marriott Ballroom

Panel #3 | Informing Action

Session chair: Stephen White, Dean of the School of Architecture, Art, and Historic Preservation, Roger Williams University

Marcy Rockman | National Park Service
The Sea Doesn’t Preserve Unimpaired: The US National Park Service Program and Vision for Cultural Heritage and Climate Change

David Waggonner | Waggonner and Ball Architects

Jeana Wiser | National Trust for Historic Preservation
Resilient Preservation: In the Face of Climate Change

Andrew Potts | US/ICOMOS
Local Impacts, Global Solutions: Tapping into the international climate change and heritage community of practice


 

SESSION ABSTRACTS

 

The Sea Doesn’t Preserve Unimpaired: The US National Park Service Program and Vision for Cultural Heritage and Climate Change

Of the current 408 units of the US National Park Service (NPS) system, 117 are on the coast. Most will be affected by rising sea levels, some by falling water levels. Collectively, these parks hold cultural resources from archaeological sites dating to the earliest peopling of the Americas, fortifications from many historic conflicts, and the development of maritime trade and diverse living and sacred places across millennia. But changing sea levels are not the only threats that are and will be affecting cultural resources in national parks and around the country – impacts in the interior are being identified as well, from acute events of flooding and fire to increased stresses of long-running changing temperatures, precipitation, ecosystems, and land use patterns. These also must be addressed and prepared for.

So, NPS is building a program for cultural resources within the overall NPS climate change response framework of science, adaptation, mitigation, and communication. It includes work with climate impacts on cultural resources and the much needed-capacity to learn about the human-climate past from cultural resources through scenario planning, adaptation frameworks, policy and guidance, greenhouse gas reduction, research, and sharing of climate stories. | Marcy Rockman

Local Impacts, Global Solutions: Tapping Into the International Climate Change and Heritage Community of Practice

Climate is global; its intensifying impacts, from rising sea levels to desertification, know no national boundaries. Equally universal is heritage’s potential as a source of resiliency. These realities and the important work being done on them across the globe — from COP21 to the Sendai Framework, regional SLR consortia and emerging global best practices for site management — make international climate change collaboration a must for historic preservation in the United States. In 2015, US/ICOMOS launched its Climate Change and Heritage Knowledge Community to utilize ICOMOS’s global heritage network to help connect US historic preservationists and CR managers to the work being done by their global peers. Andrew Potts will present on these and other opportunities in 2016 for Americans to tap into international climate change and heritage knowledge and practice. | Andrew Potts

Resilient Preservation: In the Face of Climate Change

The Resilient Preservation presentation will provide a national overview, as well as impetus, for why the issues of climate change and preservation matter now. Time will also be devoted to exploring emerging trends (inside and outside the preservation profession) as well as providing a survey of local case studies and best practices. The presentation will end with a prompt to the audience to take action. | Jeana Wiser