Islam Kamal El-Bestawi, Lecturer Faculty of Tourism and Hotels in Sadat City University.

ENHANCING CONSERVATION STRATEGIES FOR ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITES: A GIS AND REMOTE SENSING APPROACH TO ADDRESS CLIMATE CHANGE IMPACTS

Climate change is posing significant threats to archaeological sites worldwide, including those in Egypt, a country rich in outstanding cultural heritage sites. The impacts of climate change, such as rising temperatures, extreme weather events, and sea-level rise, can lead to physical degradation, erosion, and loss of archaeological outstanding sites. This research employs innovative advanced GIS and remote sensing techniques to provide a comprehensive and detailed assessment of climate change impacts on archaeological sites. The use of multiple climate models and scenarios enhances the robustness of the analysis. This research fills the gap and investigates the status and vulnerability of cultural heritage sites to climate change, especially sea level rise and rising temperatures. For sea level rise the paper investigates its projected impact in coastal cities such as, Marsa Matrouh, Alexandria, Dameitta, North Sinai under four SLR scenarios based on the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) and Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs). The mean projections of RCP 8.5 for 2046–2100 and SSP5 2081- 2100 and SLR 2m are used in this research study. Then will be mapped using remote sensing and GIS techniques. As indicators for the pressure on future cultural heritages, we estimate the area loss and percentage of each cultural heritage site. In addition to display the mitigation and adaptation actions to reduce this risk such as Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) plans and projects. While for the impacts of rising temperatures a group of cultural heritage sites in Luxor and Aswan are mapped under three different climate models (CNRM-CM6-1, MIROC 6, and RICCAR) to build future estimated vision of maximum and minimum temperature and its impacts over cultural heritage. The rising of sea level will lead to flooding and submersion of a lot of coastal archaeological sites and will increasing salinity in groundwater can cause salt crystallization, which deteriorates building materials like stone, brick, and metal. The presence of salt accelerates the decay of ancient walls, sculptures, and artifacts. The Rising temperatures and heatwaves can lead to thermal stress on building materials, causing expansion, cracking, and eventual deterioration. The high difference between diurnal temperature changes also leads to the occurrence of expansion processes at high temperatures and shrinkage at low temperatures, and this process is known as thermal movement. Thermal movement and the appearance of damage that is common because of thermal movement is the occurrence of cracks in the building, especially the upper parts of it that are more exposed to sunlight.