Abstract
Climate change increases not only the vulnerability of cultural resources, but also the cultural values that are deeply embedded in cultural resources and landscapes. As such, heritage managers are faced with imminent preservation challenges that necessitate the consideration of place meanings during adaptation planning. This study explores how stakeholders perceive the vulnerability of the tangible aspects of cultural heritage, and how climate change impacts and adaptation strategies may alter the meanings and values that are held within those resources. We conducted semi-structured interviews with individuals with known connections to the historic buildings located within cultural landscapes on the barrier islands of Cape Lookout National Seashore in the United States (US). Our findings revealed that community members hold deep place connections, and that their cultural resource values are heavily tied to the concepts of place attachment (place identity and place dependence). Interviews revealed a general acceptance of the inevitability of climate impacts and a transition of heritage meanings from tangible resources to intangible values. Our findings suggest that in the context of climate change, it is important to consider place meanings alongside physical considerations for the planning and management of vulnerable cultural resources, affirming the need to involve community members and their intangible values into the adaptive planning for cultural resources.
Highlights
The concepts of landscapes, space, and place are highly convoluted, yet exceedingly important in regard to how people connect to their environments
This study was stimulated by managers who expressed a desire to understand how stakeholders perceive the interplay between climate change impacts, as well as adaptation strategies to enhance the resilience of cultural resources, and their connections to cultural landscapes and the associated tangible resources that represent aspects of their heritage
A total of 36 names were collected as potential participants for the study, with 12 provided by the National Park Service (NPS), 15 provided by the director of the partner organization, and nine new names provided by other participants
Summary
The concepts of landscapes, space, and place are highly convoluted, yet exceedingly important in regard to how people connect to their environments. People engage with landscapes in a variety of ways, creating connections between people and places or what is often termed “a sense of place” [1,2]. Humans’ untidy and often contradictory encounters with landscapes are an integral part of forming cultural meanings, forever entangling people and their places. Landscapes are culture, landscapes form culture, and culture is embedded in landscapes [2]. Changes to cultural landscapes and the tangible resources within them can alter the intangible values associated with these places, and climate change poses unique threats to cultural landscapes, cultural resources, and associated meanings [4,5]
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