Monitoring and assessment of endangered UNESCO World Heritage Sites using space technology: a case study of East Rennell, Solomon Islands

Abstract

Space technology offers effective tools to monitor the status of World Natural Heritage sites. East Rennell Island, which covers approximately 37,000 hectares (ha) and a marine area extending three nautical miles into the sea, was added to the list of endangered World Natural Heritage sites in 2013. Deforestation and natural disasters have increasingly threatened sustainable development on the island. Based on analyses of multi-source time series of remote sensing data (e.g., MODIS and Worldview), the forest cover change on Rennell Island from 2000 to 2020 and its future trends were mapped and analysed using Sen + Mann–Kendall and Hurst index models. A land cover classification system derived from high-resolution Worldview images was developed as a baseline for monitoring and analysing future forest cover changes on the island. Our results showed that (1) the areas of vegetation degradation and improvement were basically equal from 2000 to 2020. (2) The forest cover change trend had weak continuity, and significant improvements could be achieved in areas with damaged vegetation given sufficient protection measures and financial input. (3) This heritage site has a strong vegetation regeneration ability, and human activities such as mining, logging, and road construction, which could greatly disturb the unique ecosystem, should be restricted.

Aesthetic value protection and tourism development of the world natural heritage sites: a literature review and implications for the world heritage karst sites

“…Space technology offers effective tools for monitoring the status of WNHSs [ 118 ]. Based on the research trend regarding protection management monitoring, the application of satellite RS, aerial RS, ground survey monitoring, along with big data, cloud computation, artificial intelligence, 5G communications and other heritage monitoring techniques has gradually increased, and some scholars have begun to focus their research on the monitoring of aesthetic value [ 119 , 120 ]. However, most studies use qualitative or quantitative methods, and no quantitative research methods or monitoring and evaluation models have been formed.…”

Space Technologies for Sustainable Heritage: 10th anniversary of HIST

“…Owing to the technological advance of active and passive Earth observation sensors along with intelligent processing chains (i.e., random forest classifier) and the emerging of open-source data (i.e., European Copernicus Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2), remote sensing has been applied as a systematic observation tool for stakeholders to map drastic or slowly driven landscape changes towards the better management of these sites and their surroundings [ 7 ]. In case the urgent monitoring and assessment task is required from UNESCO, the status of large-scale World Heritages can be quantitatively characterized using the thematic maps obtained from time series analysis of remote sensing images, such as the assessment conducted for the endangered UNESCO World Heritage site of East Rennell, the Solomon Islands [ 8 ]. More recently, natural heritage sites and biosphere reserves are recognized as sensitive areas for climate change and ecological degradation.…”