Sites at Risk, 2022

Video slideshow arranged by Ellen Enderle and Kate Sekules,
and produced by Bard Graduate Center, 3 min., 12 sec.

Monuments and cultural heritage sites around the world are threatened with increased frequency by the macroscopic effects of climate change. Natural disasters and extreme climate events prompt the deployment of various conservation strategies to preempt and address related risks.

In Venice, seasonal flooding events known as acqua alta have been exacerbated by rising sea levels. An ambitious system of retractable flood barriers is now activated when tides rise above set thresholds, maintaining manageable water levels in the Venetian Lagoon.

The greater occurrence of wildfires as a result of chronic droughts and rising temperatures threatens the Ancestral Puebloan sites of Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado. Archaeologists and ecologists who manage these sites now look to Indigenous knowledge and experience such as the use of controlled burns—a strategy practiced by Native peoples in North America for thousands of years—to mitigate risk.

These solutions are fundamentally guided by underlying approaches to living with activity, drawing “conservation thinking” into public consciousness.