Climatic & Anthropogenic Hazards to the Nasca World Heritage: Application of Remote Sensing, AI, and Flood Modelling

2024/05/20 by Masato Sakai, Sakai, Masato, Marcus Freitag +7
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Environmental Science · #Archaeological Research and Protection #Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI) #Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (cs.CV) #Computers and Society (cs.CY) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Flood Risk Assessment and Management #Landslides and related hazards

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2405.11814

openalex publication_date 2024/05/20 · openalex created_date 2024/05/22 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

Preservation of the Nasca geoglyphs at the UNESCO World Heritage Site in Peru is urgent as natural and human impact accelerates. More frequent weather extremes such as flashfloods threaten Nasca artifacts. We demonstrate that runoff models based on (sub-)meter scale, LiDAR-derived digital elevation data can highlight AI-detected geoglyphs that are in danger of erosion. We recommend measures of mitigation to protect the famous "lizard", "tree", and "hand" geoglyphs located close by, or even cut by the Pan-American Highway.

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