Text

theses

Natural hazards such as flooding, hurricanes, and wildfires threaten cultural heritage throughout the United States. Although disaster management for cultural heritage has improved over the last few decades, the threat of climate change increases the frequency and severity of these hazards, requiring unique planning and mitigation actions. While states and local municipalities would typically look to the federal government for financial resources and technical assistance to develop these planning tools, the Trump Administration denies the existence of human-induced climate change. Therefore, state and local governments are solely responsible to prepare their communities as well as their valuable cultural heritage and historic resources for the impacts of climate change.

This thesis seeks to demonstrate the importance of integrating climate change planning into state and local hazard mitigation plans for historic resources. By reviewing changes made by the Trump Administration to climate change planning and their likely impacts on cultural heritage, this thesis establishes the need for local climate change planning efforts to start immediately in light of this unpredictable change. The research conducted for this study involved assessments of existing state and local hazard mitigation plans in Florida, Pennsylvania, and Annapolis, Maryland, to determine best practices for integrating climate change planning into disaster management for historic resources. By identifying best practices, this thesis aims to illustrate how state and local level disaster management can prepare for the effects of climate change on historic resources despite the fact that the federal administration
denies its existence.

ETD_9436

M.A.

Includes bibliographical references

by Sara Kate Quinlan

doi:10.7282/t3-4ffn-kg44

ETD graduate

The author owns the copyright to this work.