Impact of urban sprawl to cultural heritage monuments: The case study of Paphos area in Cyprus

Abstract

Urbanisation processes as a result of population growth, migration and infrastructure initiatives have a direct impact to cultural heritage sites. This paper aims to monitor growth dynamics of the urbanisation process that took place in the Paphos district, southwest Cyprus during the last decades, and evaluate its impact to monuments and archaeological sites. In this extensive area, several important archaeological sites and monuments are found, while some of them are also listed in the UNESCO catalogue of World Cultural Heritage sites. GIS and remote sensing techniques have been used in order to map the listed monuments in the Paphos District, as well as to record spatial and temporal land use changes since the 1980s. The spatial patterns of urban sprawl are studied and analysed using archive time series medium resolution Landsat ETM+ and TM satellite imagery. In addition, a DMSP-OLS night-ime image was also used. Several supervised and unsupervised classification algorithms have been evaluated and examined for this purpose. Additionally, Markov equation were applied in an attempt to predict future urban expansion The final outcomes revealed that a dramatic increase of the urban areas took place in the last years in Paphos district, and as a result significant pressure is expected on archaeological sites found in the peri-urban areas

Integrated Investigation of Built Heritage Monuments: The Case Study of Paphos Harbour Castle, Cyprus

“…Regarding the harbour castle of Nea Paphos, the most substantial impact in relation to the deterioration of the monuments' constructive materials is its direct exposure to the atmospheric conditions and more specifically its location in great proximity to the sea. The potential impact of the sudden and intense urbanization of the city after 1974 [28,29], needs to be investigated also. This combination accelerated the deterioration processes, while at the same time rendering them more intense and complicated.…”

Effects of Urban Growth on Architectural Heritage: The Case of Buddhist Monasteries in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

“…Landsat satellite images were provided by the United States Geological Survey Earth Explorer [61]. The Landsat satellite data offered various bands with a diverse spectral range, which provided highly differentiated applications, such as monitoring urban growth and classifying the growth's spatial and temporal characteristics [52,53]. Vector data on China's municipal administrative divisions were obtained from the 1:1 Million Basic National Geographic Database of the National Catalogues Service for Geographic Information [57].…”

“…Remote sensing data provide historical time series data and current information on urban spatial structure and city border regions. The geographic information system (GIS) is considered to be one of the most efficient tools for analyzing, mapping, and retrieving these remote sensing data, and these tools have been widely applied to mapping urban growth [47][48][49]; analyzing the impact of human activities on the climate, ecosystem, and environment of the Q-T Plateau [50,51]; cultural heritage management; and risk assessments near heritage sites [52][53][54].…”

Impact of Land Use Change to the Soil Erosion Estimation for Cultural Landscapes: Case Study of Paphos District in Cyprus

“…As shown for instance in Figure 7, "Nea Paphos" archaeological site is vulnerable to soil erosion hazard. Though the site has been characterized as World Heritage monument, and therefore protected from anthropogenic hazards such as urban expansion (Agapiou et al, 2015, Agapiou et al, 2016, natural threats such as soil erosion can have a significant impact on the site and its surrounding ecosystem. It should be stressed that within the archaeological area, only some parts have been excavated and therefore some significant archaeological findings are expected to be found in the future by the archaeological community.…”