{"id":771980,"date":"2026-06-09T05:49:49","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T12:49:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/?post_type=blog&#038;p=771980"},"modified":"2026-07-23T11:39:51","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T18:39:51","slug":"mapping-unesco-heritage-sites-revealed-new-understanding","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/blog\/mapping-unesco-heritage-sites-revealed-new-understanding","title":{"rendered":"Mapping UNESCO&#8217;s Sites Revealed What Decades of Paper Records Couldn&#8217;t"},"author":671,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"sync_status":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","transcript_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","castos_file_data":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[10862],"tags":[1301,493406,475302,271,481062],"industry":[],"esri-blog-category":[478652],"esri_blog_department":[478222,478192,478212],"class_list":["post-771980","blog","type-blog","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-esri","tag-biodiversity","tag-culture","tag-heritage","tag-mapping","tag-unesco","esri-blog-category-monitoring","esri_blog_department-conservation-and-environment","esri_blog_department-gis-for-good","esri_blog_department-resilience"],"acf":{"video_source":"","video_start":"","video_stop":"","short_description":"UNESCO knew where its sites were. Mapping their boundaries unlocked connections, threats, and findings no one expected.","pdf":{"host_remotely":false,"file":"","file_url":""},"flexible_content":[{"acf_fc_layout":"sidebar","layout":"standard","image_reference":null,"image_reference_figure":"","spotlight_image":null,"section_title":"","spotlight_name":"","position":"Right","content":"The UNESCO Sites Navigator transformed decades of paper records into a living system, revealing the close relationship between cultural and natural heritage.\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Key Takeaways<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li>The UNESCO Sites Navigator serves as a global early warning system for heritage sites and natural areas under threat.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Spatial data contributed to bring together natural areas and cultural heritage, bridging a 50-year divide between specialists.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Mapping proved heritage sites aren\u2019t just protected places\u2014they play an active role in addressing climate and other global challenges.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>","snippet":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For decades, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) relied on paper maps\u2014some dating to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.unesco.org\/en\/world-heritage\/map\">World Heritage List's first entries<\/a> in 1978. The organization knew what was on its list. But the precise boundaries of more than a thousand World Heritage properties, hundreds of Biosphere Reserves, and a growing network of Global Geoparks were fragmented across paper records and scattered files.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cOf course, we all knew where the Colosseum in Rome was on the map,\u201d said Fernando Avakian, the project manager behind the UNESCO Sites Navigator. \u201cBut how can we make sense of the scattered data that describe it, and link it with other World Heritage sites or protected areas, whether they overlap or not?\u201d<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The <a href=\"https:\/\/experience.arcgis.com\/experience\/4f1652275d1f4656964b64a20a7346d3#zoom_to_selection=true\">UNESCO Sites Navigator<\/a> brings together the georeferenced boundaries of UNESCO sites into a single interactive system. The data is sourced and validated by each country and site managers, then verified by UNESCO\u2014authoritative enough to carry the weight of international law. Having it all in one place makes possible what scattered paper records couldn't: deeper analysis, better planning, strong impact assessments, and conservation at global scale.<\/p>"},{"acf_fc_layout":"gallery","gallery_images":[771987,771998,771993,771996,771988,771997]},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"<h3 style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>The Discovery<\/strong><\/h3>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For 50 years, UNESCO kept its designations in separate categories\u2014cultural heritage in one program, natural sites in another, Biosphere Reserves in a third. Mapping them together helped understand their relationships, with the overlaps revealing connections that these categories had obscured.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Pyrenees straddle the border between France and Spain. They simultaneously form a mixed World Heritage site\u2014recognized for both natural and cultural value\u2014a Biosphere Reserve, and a Geopark. The mountains give rise to the biodiversity. That biodiversity shapes the culture. \u201cThe terrain is the key to both things,\u201d Avakian said. \u201cIn this context, any clearcut distinction between nature and culture is essentially artificial.\u201d<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Local and Indigenous communities living within such sites around the world have always understood the connections. The Navigator made that knowledge visible at the institutional level.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That visibility now serves a global conservation mandate. The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework committed countries to protecting 30 percent of the planet\u2019s land and ocean by 2030\u2014the \u201c30x30\u201d target. Meeting that target demands a way to see protected areas, ecosystem health, and threatened species. Where are wildlife corridors breaking down? Where should restoration go?<\/p>"},{"acf_fc_layout":"gallery","gallery_images":[771989,771984,771991,771995,771985,771983]},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The team is building pressure profiles that track habitat fragmentation across the corridors species rely on for mating, migration, and survival\u2014not just within protected sites, but between them. They are also outlining how to track, globally, whether restoration projects deliver results over the three-to-five-year timelines ecological processes require.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span lang=\"EN-GB\">\u201cToo often, UNESCO-designated sites are viewed primarily through the lens of vulnerability to climate change,\u201d Avakian said. \u201cYet these sites are also among our most powerful allies in addressing the climate and biodiversity crises, delivering benefits that extend far beyond their boundaries.\u201d From carbon storage and biodiversity conservation to ecosystem resilience and sustainable livelihoods, UNESCO-designated sites provide essential services that help communities adapt and thrive in a changing world.<\/span><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A newly published UNESCO global assessment\u2014<em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.unesco.org\/en\/articles\/people-and-nature-unesco-designated-sites-global-and-local-contributions\">People and nature in UNESCO-designated sites: Global and local contributions<\/a><\/em>\u2014puts figures to what the Navigator makes visible. While global wildlife populations have fallen 73 percent since 1970, populations within UNESCO-designated sites have remained comparatively stable.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yes, sites need protection. But they also provide it.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h3 style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>The Watch<\/strong><\/h3>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The World Heritage system recognizes a standard list of threats and factors affecting sites, consisting of a series of 14 primary factors\u2014from buildings and development to armed conflict and extreme weather\u00a0(see sidebar). The Navigator automates detection of some of the threats that can be mapped and pairs each with scientific thresholds that separate routine from danger.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For example, savannas are meant to flame under certain circumstances. Temperate forests need periodic burns. The challenge is distinguishing routine from crisis. \u201cWe run the risk of having alert fatigue by fake positives,\u201d Avakian said. \u201cNot every fire is an alert. Not every earthquake is a threat. Alerts must be meaningful.\u201d<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To calibrate when an event becomes a threat, the team draws on scientific expertise from across UNESCO\u2014specialists in oceanography, hydrology, biodiversity, Geoparks, and disaster risk.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When alerts trigger, the team can contact site managers, the country\u2019s national commission or field staff to verify conditions on the ground. For example, during recent fires in South America, that meant contacting teams first to ask if they were safe, then to assess damage. Ninety-nine percent of the work is done by the people who know these places intimately, experts and local communities.<\/p>"},{"acf_fc_layout":"gallery","gallery_images":[772615,772610,772611,772612,772613,772614]},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The team watches the slow-moving pressures most closely\u2014the ones that haven\u2019t yet crossed a boundary line. \u201cIt's saddening to visually track vegetation disturbances, even if it\u2019s outside of the protected areas,\u201d admitted Avakian. \u201cBut it means that these events are getting closer to protected sites.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h3 style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>The Invitation<\/strong><\/h3>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Navigator is public. Anyone can open it to discover the more than 1,200 World Heritage properties, 784 Biosphere Reserves, and 228 Geoparks that exist worldwide or to watch a threat unfold.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Navigator has helped drive major findings. In July 2025, UNESCO reported that <a href=\"https:\/\/whc.unesco.org\/en\/news\/2785\/\">fires accounted for 75 percent of tree cover loss in World Heritage sites<\/a>\u2014a direct threat to the carbon sinks those forests provide. That same month, UNESCO and the World Resources Institute revealed that <a href=\"https:\/\/whc.unesco.org\/en\/news\/2788\/\">73 percent of World Heritage sites were highly exposed to water-related hazards<\/a> such as drought, water stress, or flooding.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When fires swept across Patagonia in early 2025, the Navigator captured the full scope of what was at stake. In Argentina, flames tore through Los Alerces National Park\u2014a World Heritage site sheltering some of the oldest trees on Earth. The same year, in Chile, fires pressed against a number of Biosphere Reserves in the south.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cBeing myself from South America, it was heartbreaking to see all those places that I personally had been to being burned,\u201d Avakian said. The fires are now under control, but the scars remain on the landscape\u2014and in the data.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Months later, by chance during a holiday in Slovenia, he checked the Navigator on his phone and found a Biosphere Reserve he\u2019d never heard of nearby\u2014a ski area that bans artificial snow because of its protected status.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIt\u2019s a constant treasure hunt,\u201d Avakian said.<\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Learn how <a href=\"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/en-us\/industries\/conservation\/overview\">conservationists apply GIS to protect and restore the natural world<\/a>.<\/p>"},{"acf_fc_layout":"sidebar","layout":"standard","image_reference":null,"image_reference_figure":"","spotlight_image":null,"section_title":"","spotlight_name":"","position":"Center","content":"<h3 style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>The 14 Threats UNESCO Monitors Affecting World Heritage<\/strong><\/h3>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In 2008, the World Heritage Committee adopted a standard list of factors affecting the Outstanding Universal Value of World Heritage properties: 14 primary categories encompassing 83 secondary threats. Developed through a two-year consultation with experts in natural and cultural heritage, the categories apply across all regions and all types of heritage.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<ol>\r\n \t<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong> Buildings and Development. <\/strong>Housing, commercial construction, industrial facilities, and other built projects that encroach on sites or alter their settings, skylines, and viewsheds.<\/li>\r\n \t<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong> Transportation Infrastructure. <\/strong>Roads, railways, airports, bridges, tunnels, and shipping lanes that fragment landscapes and introduce noise, vibration, and traffic.<\/li>\r\n \t<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong> Utilities or Service Infrastructure. <\/strong>Energy systems, water and sewage infrastructure, pipelines, and telecommunications installations that disrupt physical fabric or visual integrity.<\/li>\r\n \t<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong> Pollution. <\/strong>Air, water, and soil contamination from industrial discharge, agricultural runoff, solid waste, and light or heat pollution.<\/li>\r\n \t<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong> Biological Resource Use and Modification. <\/strong>Logging, fishing, hunting, agriculture, livestock grazing, and aquaculture that alter habitats or deplete species within or adjacent to protected areas.<\/li>\r\n \t<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong> Physical Resource Extraction. <\/strong>Mining, quarrying, oil and gas drilling, and water extraction that degrade landscapes, disrupt geological formations, and compromise site integrity.<\/li>\r\n \t<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong> Local Conditions Affecting Physical Fabric. <\/strong>Wind, moisture, temperature fluctuation, erosion, and biological colonization \u2014 site-specific, often chronic processes distinct from climate change.<\/li>\r\n \t<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong> Social and Cultural Uses of Heritage. <\/strong>Shifts in ritual, religious, or community practices; changes in traditional knowledge systems; evolving cultural values that reshape how places are understood and maintained.<\/li>\r\n \t<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong> Other Human Activities. <\/strong>Armed conflict, civil unrest, terrorism, illegal activities, vandalism, deliberate destruction, and governance failures that leave sites exposed.<\/li>\r\n \t<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong> Climate Change and Severe Weather Events. <\/strong>Rising temperatures, shifting precipitation, sea level rise, increased storm intensity, drought, and desertification \u2014 pressures that compound virtually every other threat.<\/li>\r\n \t<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong> Sudden Ecological or Geological Events. <\/strong>Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, avalanches, landslides, wildfire, and floods \u2014 acute, often catastrophic, with little warning.<\/li>\r\n \t<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong> Invasive or Alien Species and Hyper-Abundant Species. <\/strong>Non-native organisms that outcompete indigenous species, and native species grown out of balance, disrupting the ecological systems heritage depends on.<\/li>\r\n \t<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong> Management and Institutional Factors. <\/strong>Inadequate legal frameworks, absent management plans, insufficient funding, weak enforcement, and gaps in institutional capacity.<\/li>\r\n \t<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong> Other Factors. <\/strong>A catch-all for threats that don\u2019t fit the above \u2014 acknowledging that heritage faces pressures as diverse as the places themselves.<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Of these 14 categories, some\u2014fires, earthquakes, vegetation disturbance, coral stress\u2014leave signatures satellites can detect. Others are harder to map. \u201cChanges on cultural understanding of a given site,\u201d Avakian puts it, \u201ccannot be mapped.\u201d The Navigator focuses on threats it can monitor reliably, then pairs spatial intelligence with on-the-ground verification from site managers and scientific expertise from across UNESCO.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><em>Source: <\/em><i><a href=\"https:\/\/whc.unesco.org\/en\/171\">UNESCO World Heritage Convention website<\/a>. Full list of 83 secondary factors at\u00a0<\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/whc.unesco.org\/en\/factors\/\"><i>whc.unesco.org\/en\/factors<\/i><\/a><i>.<\/i><\/p>\r\n\r\n<div><i>.<\/i><\/div>","snippet":""}],"references":null},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.9 (Yoast SEO v25.9) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Mapping UNESCO World Heritage Sites<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"UNESCO knew where its sites were. 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