Assessing the climate change risk to underwater cultural heritage: the EU-funded WATERISKULT project

The impact of climate change on cultural assets represents a topical subject of scientific research, although spotlighting heritage sites on land while often neglecting the vulnerability of the underwater world. The WATERISKULT project (https://wateriskult.geoscienze.unipd.it), funded by the European Union under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, aims at filling that gap. The project will provide the first quantitative assessment of the risk to underwater cultural heritage, with a focus on archaeological stone, a material part of countless remains of ancient cities and ship cargoes sunken in the oceans. This contribution introduces WATERISKULT by presenting its layout and first research activities, based on an interdisciplinary approach (including petrography, oceanography, analytical chemistry, marine biology, hydraulic engineering, and underwater archaeology) and a mixed field and laboratory experimentation. The key-factors of climate change under investigation involve ocean acidification, sea level rise, ocean warming, and extreme weather events. Moreover, the causes and effects of current deterioration of archaeological stone materials are being explored, considering the Mediterranean Sea as pilot area. The research results are expected to help assessing the observed and predicted decay trends of underwater heritage sites, constrained by the diverse characteristics of the component materials and submarine environments.