EDITORIAL
Monuments under threat: environmental impact, preservation
strategies and natural stone recourses
Siegfried Siegesmund • Joerg Ruedrich
Received: 6 March 2011 / Accepted: 19 March 2011 / Published online: 6 April 2011
 The Author(s) 2011. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com
On the Earth’s surface, natural building stones are sub-
jected to the influences of the atmosphere, hydrosphere and
biosphere. Different weathering processes result when
these spheres interact with geomaterials that in the long run
lead to the disintegration of natural building stones. In the
past 150 years, anthropogenic influences consisting of
artificial emissions have lead to the most prevalent changes
in the atmosphere. Urban environments contain innumer-
able buildings and works of art constructed from the nat-
ural stone that are exposed to weathering. In these
environments, the weathering processes are negatively
influenced through the emission of suspended particles and
gases.
An important theme of the future is local and global
climatic change, whether it will be man-made or of a
natural origin. The migration of climatic zones will also
change the local conditions of monuments all around the
globe, not only the intensification of particular weather
conditions that may lead up to natural catastrophes.
Today, special weather events such as storms and tor-
rential rains as well as heat waves will continue to increase.
The changing climatic situation will significantly affect the
temperature and moisture balance of monuments and
facades built from the natural stone. Likewise, the migra-
tion of climate zones is already evident today and the
further advancement is a cause for alarm. Rising temper-
atures in regions with permafrost in winter periods will
lead to increase in freeze–thaw cycles. However, positive
effects for the specific regions cannot be ruled out. Local
warming of the climate in some regions can cause the
occurrence of freeze–thaw cycles to decrease.
Since buildings and monuments are subjected to long-
term weathering processes, the growing number of objects
worthy of protection is increasing, which leads to a huge
rise in the costs for preservation and maintenance. Due to
this situation, improved preservation strategies are being
developed for the protection of humanity’s cultural heri-
tage. In the past several years, different focal points have
emerged. These include: (1) scientific research on the
materials and their properties and how they interact with
environmental influences for a better understanding of
weathering processes, (2) research on the material com-
patibility between the natural stone and conservation and
consolidation methods, and (3) improved protection of
monuments through regular maintenance based on the
optimised structural measures of inventory and the devel-
opment of priority lists.
The Earth’s surface shows an enormous volume and a
great diversity of natural stones. Only a few, however, are
suitable for being used as a natural building stone. Since
nature does not create the corresponding rocks in the life-
span of a human being, the exploitation of these rocks and
the availability of good natural stones will most likely
continue to decrease. One example is the Carrara Marble
(Italy), which has been excavated from a large number of
quarries over the past 2000 years. It is becoming increas-
ingly clear in the present societal discussion concerning the
resource conservation for future generations, that today’s
society needs to develop a sustainable way in the utilisation
of natural resources. Consequently, the future excavation
of natural stones will result in conditions that are essen-
tially driven by resource conserving exploitation, whereby
the volume of cuttings and waste will be reduced. In
S. Siegesmund (&)  J. Ruedrich
GZG, Structural Geology and Geodynamics, University of
Go¨ttingen, Goldschmidtstr. 3, 37077 Go¨ttingen, Germany
e-mail: ssieges@gwdg.de
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Environ Earth Sci (2011) 63:1413–1414
DOI 10.1007/s12665-011-1040-x
addition, the assurance of quality, which is based on a
better understanding of local weathering processes, is an
important problem for present and future natural resource
exploitation.
Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License which per-
mits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any
medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
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