Important natural sites, such as geoparks and geosites, as well as cultural heritage sites made of stones and earthen materials have suffered from weathering and deterioration problems repeatedly. For the purpose of their treatments or conservation, there is ongoing need to approach heritage protection from an interdisciplinary point of view. Recent research has resulted in the significant development of non-destructive and non-invasive techniques, which are widely necessary for the conservation of such sites. There is, however, much ground to cover on this front.
In this SPEPS special collection, we invite authors to submit reviews and research articles on their innovative study or on new devices, testing methodologies, protocols and data treatments (e.g. digital or 3D documentation). Additionally, this issue welcomes discussions on original research and case studies of documentation, measurement and monitoring techniques, experimental work, predictive models, and damage assessments, which allow better understanding of decay mechanisms, state of deterioration and response to treatments. Interconnections among different research fields will be addressed, such as geomorphology, engineering geology, geoarchaeology, petrophysics, geochemistry and geotechnical engineering, aiming at covering the interdisciplinary field of heritage conservation.
Edited by: Chiaki T. Oguchi, Céline Thomachot-Schneider, Patricia Vazquez, Magdalini Theodoridou