Impacts of Climate Change on Vernacular Landscapes and Cultural Heritage

This book reveals the impacts of climate change and anthropogenic interventions on vernacular landscapes as a cultural heritage through an analysis of regional and urban development projects and local-level practices. Vernacular landscapes encompass customs, practices, places, objects, artistic expressions, and values that are innate to a particular place and time, with climate knowledge embedded alongside other environmental, cultural, and societal determinants. The cultural heritage of these places is threatened by climate and disaster risks, such as loss of land, food sources, water resources, intangible values, and displacement.

The book first critically unfolds the legacy of vernacular heritage responses to local conditions, focusing on climate, drawing on the examples of vernacular heritage sites worldwide, including India, Japan, and Mali. It then critically analyses the effects of climate and disaster risks on vernacular heritage, accelerated by spatial and local decisions and practices in a detailed study in Fındıklı, a district of Rize Province on the Black Sea coast in Turkey. It evaluates the insights, perceptions, and experiences of local people through interviews aiming to shed light on climate-resilient vernacular heritage sites.

By understanding the present challenges resulting from past decisions and actions at various scales, this book offers an interdisciplinary approach to the emerging field of climate change adaptation of cultural heritage studies. Bridging multiple fields, it will be of interest to researchers, academics, and students interested in cultural heritage, climate change studies, environmental studies, architectural and landscape conservation, and planning.

Gül Aktürk is Assistant Professor in Heritage Studies in the Faculty of Archaeology at Leiden University. Her research interest lies in the intersection of climate change and cultural heritage. Her research also investigates climate resilience of cultural heritage, vernacular heritage, cultural landscapes, climate displacement, intangible cultural heritage, land-use changes, critical heritage studies, and archaeological heritage management.

She is an architect and studied MSc Architectural Conservation at Edinburgh University between 2012 and 2013. She then worked in several architectural restoration projects and archaeological excavations for over 5 years.

She completed her PhD with the title of ＂Climate Change and the Resilience of Collective Memories＂ in the Faculty of Architecture at TU Delft in January 2023. She received VAG Publication Grant to publish her PhD thesis as a book. Before completing her PhD, she started her postdoctoral research on I-tree 2.0 NL project in the Industrial Design Engineering Faculty at TU Delft.