Ionut Cristi Nicu

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• PhD
• Research Professor (Researcher I) at Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU)

Geohazards are a global phenomenon, affecting both modern infrastructure and remnants from history. The extreme climate change occurring in Arctic Svalbard makes it one of the most environmentally sensitive areas for cultural heritage (CH) in the Northern Hemisphere. The physical landscapes, comprising mountain slopes, glacial, fluvial, and coastal...

Arctic permafrost is undergoing rapid changes due to climate warming in high latitudes. Retrogressive thaw slumps (RTS) are one of the most abrupt and impactful thermal-denudation events that change Arctic landscapes and accelerate carbon feedbacks. Their spatial distribution remains poorly characterised due to time-intensive conventional mapping m...

Cryospheric hazards - in this case, thaw slumps (TS) and thermo-erosion gullies (TEG) - are phenomena typical of permafrost-dominated landscapes. Open datasets informing about their spatial, temporal and size distributions in the Arctic are still uncommon, as opposed to the systematic availability of this information for geomorphic processes in mid...

The Svalbard Archipelago represents the northernmost place on Earth where cryospheric hazards, such as thaw slumps (TSs) and thermo-erosion gullies (TEGs) could take place and rapidly develop under the influence of climatic variations. Svalbard permafrost is specifically sensitive to rapidly occurring warming, and therefore, a deeper understanding...

Over the past decade, research on the impacts of climate change on immovable cultural heritage (ICH) in the polar regions (Arctic and Antarctica) has slowly increased. This article offers a systematic review and synthesis of the publications about climate change impacts on the diverse ICH and climate change adaptation in the polar regions. Gray lit...

The THETIDA Horizon Europe project addresses the pressing need to protect coastal and underwater cultural heritage from the threats of climate change. It aims to develop and validate an integrated risk assessment and protection system through participatory processes. This paper delves into the transformative potential of Living Labs that serve as m...

Mean annual temperatures in the Arctic and subarctic have increased in recent decades, increasing the number of permafrost hazards. Retrogressive thaw slumps (RTSs), triggered by the thawing of ground ice in permafrost soil, have become more common in the Arctic. Many studies report an increase in RTS activity on a local or regional scale. In this...

The Svalbard archipelago lies 1100 km south of the North Pole and 800 km north of the Norwegian coast. The region is one of the most important and strategic terrestrial nodes on Earth, separating the Greenland Sea, the Barents Sea, and the Arctic Ocean. The cultural landscape reflects human life and activity in a harsh and fragile environment. We...

With climate warming, the cultural heritage sites of the Arctic are in great danger. Extensive research is needed to study such sites. The archaeological site at Russekeila-Kapp Linné, Svalbard was selected for the survey as previous research had highlighted its vulnerability to cryospheric hazards. The main objectives of the survey were (i) to reg...

The article presents the results of research aimed at collecting and systematizing information about the settlements of the Volga Bulgaria period (10th-early 13th centuries). For the first time in Russia, field studies of 88 medieval settlements of different size were carried out using UAVs and GNSS equipment. The collected information was compiled...

The Svalbard Archipelago represents the northernmost place on Earth where cryospheric hazards, such as thaw slumps (TS) and thermo-erosion gullies (TEG) could take place and rapidly develop under the influence of climatic 15 variations. Svalbard permafrost is specifically sensitive to rapidly occurring warming and therefore, a deeper understanding...

This paper aims to highlight the relevance of ancient international adaptation measures of built heritage and how can they be relevant and applied to Norway. Specifically, it will focus on historic measures applied to mitigate extreme hazards (fire and floods) and slow degradation (decay) of built heritage. For this, we used the scientific database...

Gully erosion is one of the most destructive geomorphological processes on relatively flat surfaces. This is exacerbated in the Arctic regions, where gullies are referred to as thermo-erosion gullies because of their unique connection to permafrost. As the surface of the permafrost freezes and thaws, soil particles destabilize, inducing erosion alo...

This study focuses on the Kuibyshev reservoir (Volga River basin, Russia)—the largest in Eurasia and the third in the world by area (6150 km2). The objective of this paper is to quantitatively assess the dynamics of reservoir bank landslides and shoreline abrasion at active zones based on the integrated use of modern instrumental methods (i.e., ter...

In recent decades, the intensity and increasing numbers of natural disasters have started to affect immovable cultural heritage around the world. This is important due to the high complexity and impossibility of recovering any kind of data from a cultural heritage asset destroyed by a natural disaster. This SI has brought to the attention of the re...

Permafrost-dependent landslides occur in a range of sizes and are among the most dynamic landforms in the Arctic in the warming climate. Retrogressive thaw slumps (RTSs) are enlarging landslides triggered by thawing and release of excess water from permafrost ground ice, causing smaller or larger collapses of ground surface, which in turn exposes n...

Gully erosion represents one of the most destructive geomorphological processes at a global level. Modern methods of gully erosion measurement are typically derived from earlier techniques that have since become outdated. The increasing capabilities of technology had led to new ways of quantifying soil erosion processes (e.g. gully erosion) which m...

Strong cultural heritage management relies on a thorough evaluation of the threats faced by heritage sites, both in the present and in the future. In this study, we analysed the changes in the position of Hiorthhamn shoreline (Svalbard), which is affecting coastal cultural heritage sites, for a period of 93 years (1927–2020). Shoreline changes were...

Erosion at archaeological sites in Central Newfoundland, Canada is a major concern, which is compounded by the fact that there has been a dearth of archaeological research in this region. While more than 70 house pits are known, very few excavations have examined whole features in the Exploits River Valley (ERV), and the archaeology of many has not...

Cultural heritage is the foundation upon which global and historical values are based on. It connects us to the legacy left by our ancestors and identifies who we are as part of the modern society. Globally and specifically in the northeastern Romania, the landscape where cultural heritage sites were built on is constantly evolving due to mass wast...

Cultural heritage is the foundation upon which global and historical values are based on. It connects us to the legacy left by our ancestors and identify who we are as part of the modern society. The landscape where cultural heritage sites were built on is constantly evolving due to mass wasting processes. Among these processes, landslide and gulli...

Hiorthhamn is an abandoned Norwegian coal mining settlement with a loading dock and a lot of industrial infrastructure left in the coastal zone. In this study, changes in the position of 1.3 km of the Hiorthhamn shoreline, which affect cultural heritage, is described for a time-period spanning 92 years (1927–2019). The shoreline positions were esta...

Prehistoric sites in NE Romania are facing major threats more than ever, both from natural and human-induced hazards. One of the main reasons are the climate change determined natural disasters, but human-induced activities should also not be neglected. The situation is critical for Chalcolithic sites, with a very high density in the region and min...

Archaeological predictive modelling (APM) is an important method for archaeological research and cultural heritage management. This study tests the viability of a new statistical method for APM. Frequency ratio (FR) is widely used in the field of geosciences but has not been applied in APM. This study tests FR in a catchment from the north-eastern...

In this study, the land use around the Churches of Moldavia, UNESCO WH (World Heritage) sites, has been analysed using photo interpretation and GIS. The cartographic analysis used historical maps and modern orthophotos to highlight the main changes that took place over the last century in the area surrounding the sites, which has been extended to 1...

The landforms of the Earth’s surface ranging from large-scale features to local topography are factors that influence human behavior in terms of habitation practices. The ability to extract geomorphological settings using geoinformatic techniques is an important aspect of any environmental analysis and archaeological landscape approach. Morphologic...

Over the last decades, the number of artificial reservoirs around the world has considerably increased. This leads to the formation of new shorelines, which are highly dynamic regarding erosion and deposition processes. The present work aims to assess the direct human action along the largest reservoir in Europe—Kuibyshev (Russian Federation) and t...

Natural hazards are usually approached by geosciences (geology, geography); they are a cause of planetary evolution that can be divided into geological hazards (earthquakes, volcanic eruption), meteorological hazards (hailstorm, heat wave, cyclones, ice storm, tornado), and hydrological hazards (floods, droughts, mudslides). Over the last decades,...

Soil erosion is a serious problem spread over a variety of climatic areas around the world. The main purpose of this paper is to produce gully erosion susceptibility maps using different statistical models, such as frequency ratio (FR) and information value (IV), in a catchment from the northeastern part of Romania, covering a surface of 550 km². I...

The aim of this study is to compare the predictive strenghtness of different diagnostic areas in determining landslide susceptibility using frequency ratio (FR), statistical index (SI), and analytic hierarchy process (AHP) models in a catchment from the northeastern part of Romania. Scarps (point), landslide areas (polygon), and middle of the lands...

The paper presents the research undertaken in the coastal area of Kuibyshev Reservoir from Republic of Tatarstan, Russia. The aim of the research is to assess the erosion rate of the coastline, to identify the most dynamic parts, and to improve the predictions of the future archaeological sites being under threat from coastal erosion. As a baseline...

This paper presents the applicability of the analytic hierarchy process, frequency ratio, and statistical index in landslide susceptibility mapping for an area from North-eastern Romania. The dependent factor (in this case the landslides) was determined by combining seven conditioning factors: elevation, slope angle, curvature, normalised differenc...

This study presents a review of how natural hazards can impact on immovable cultural heritage (ICH). In the last few decades, the global impact of natural hazards on cultural heritage appears to be growing, which in part, may be a response to the changes in the intensity and frequency of geomorphological processes in the light of climate and enviro...

The easternmost sector of the Eastern Romanian Carpathians (i.e. the flysch area) has a typical morphology, shaped mainly by gravitation-induced landsliding. The heterogeneity of lithological associations, in conjunction with structure, acts as the main cause of massive landsliding processes that affected the hill slopes across broad areas of up to...

Dear Ionut Cristi Nicu, This report will provide you with an overview of how your eBook performed on SpringerLink in 2016. We would also like to give you an update on key initiatives, such as our close collaboration with ORCID, the launch of Springer Nature SharedIt, and SciGraph. Last year we introduced you to Bookmetrix, a platform that offers y...

This study aims to produce landslide susceptibility maps using frequency ratio (FR) model with the help of GIS to be used in cultural heritage (CH) mitigation and assessment for a catchment from North-eastern Romania. In total, seven conditioning factors were used to assess the landslide susceptibility index (LSI): elevation, slope angle, curvature...

In this study, historical maps and orthophotos were used as a baseline to establish the vulnerability of CH (cultural heritage) sites to natural and anthropic elements as a tool for cultural heritage management in Valea Oii river basin (North-eastern Romania). Starting from the 19th century, a series of natural hazards begun to have a frequent occu...

Among the various stochastic approaches, Binary Logistic Regression (BLR) is one of the most used because it calculates the susceptibility in probabilistic terms and its results are easily interpretable from a geomorphological point of view. However, very often not much importance is given to multicollinearity assessment whose effect is that the co...

Cuejdel Lake in the Eastern Carpathians (Romania) formed in 1991 following the damming of the Cuejdiu brook from torrential rainfall causing a massive landslide of natural deposits. In 2011, using a Bathy-500DF Dual Frequency Hydrographic Echo Sounder, the first detailed bathymetric model of the lacustrine cuvette was produced, using more than 45,0...

The study area is located in the north-eastern part of Romania, with a surface of 97 km², at the intersection of the parallel of 47°21′0.86ʺ lat. N with the meridian 26°49′37.07ʺ long. E and the intersection of parallel of 47° 13′23.32ʺ lat. N with the meridian of 27° 10′35.68ʺ long. E. The catchment has a length of 31 km, a maximum altitude of 443...

The final and the most important chapter of the thesis present three illustrative case studies that are under the direct effect of soil processes: erosion (gully erosion, land sliding) and accumulation (warping). It represents a relatively new field of study, with a few case studies found in the international literature. In order to evaluate de des...

Analyzing water resources from a certain area can provide us important information regarding the spread and dynamics of prehistoric population. Within the study area the present water resources dynamics (ponds) are analyzed based on old topographic maps; the hydrological data available made possible the analysis of extreme hydrological events, such...

In this chapter a short history and evolution of geoarchaeology is provided. Being an interdisciplinary science, there are difficulties in finding and providing a precise definition, even for the experienced researchers. Worldwide there is a strong tradition in geoarchaeological studies published in dedicated journals and a lot of active working gr...

The pedological complexity is determined by the specific lithologic complexity of the Moldavian Plain. In order to analyze the distribution of soil classes the pedological maps were digitized. Over the soil classes’ layer the archaeological sites layer was overlapped to identify the spread of prehistoric settlements according to this factor; more t...

The area falls into the silvosteppe and deciduous forests category of vegetation. Silvosteppe is characteristic for this part of the country. Given the fact that in the past the territory was covered by Sarmatic Sea, there are specific plants developed on a Sarmatian substrate; salty grass has an important economic role within the catchment. Around...

A short and concise analyze of the twenty six Chalcolithic archaeological sites is made in this chapter. Along the four stages of evolution (Precucuteni, Cucuteni A, Cucuteni A-B, Cucuteni B), the Chalcolithic civilization has spread over a large surface in Eastern Europe (approximately 350 000 km2), being characterised by the development of brass...

In order to accomplish the proposed results, a series of modern research techniques were used. The DTM was generated by digitizing topographic plans scale 1:5000 (1979 edition), which was basically the base layer for other geospatial and archaeological data. Other maps from different years and scale were integrated in the study. Digital data was co...

Based on the DTM different analysis of the relief is made (hypsometry, slope, aspect), as well as the geomorphological map of the catchment. The genetic types of relief are analyzed in detail. An important part of this chapter is the analysis of placement of archaeological sites based on morphology and morphometry. The analysis has highlighted that...

Global climatic changes are affecting all the areas of the world. Especially in the north-eastern part of Romania where, over the last century the average annual temperature increased by 0.5°C. The average annual temperature for the study area is between 8°–9.5°C, and the amounts of rainfall range between 500–700 mm. For this part of the country th...

The area overlaps the Moldavian Platform. The dominant deposits in the catchment belong to Bassarabian. Bassarabian sediments are mainly composed of an alternation of marls, sands, clays, with a significant thickness of about 1000 m, especially in the northern part of Cucuteni village and west of Baiceni village. The general pitch of the strata is...

This book presents a balanced combination of practical and theoretical aspects of geoarchaeology. To do so, it gathers all the components of a natural framework (geology, relief, hydrography, climate, soils, flora and fauna), which have been analyzed from an archaeological perspective. While globally this is a highly developed and researched area,...

This study concerns the analysis of the Valea Oii watershed and the dynamics of human settlement depending on the occurrence of natural risk factors and their evolution. These include climatic change fluctuations, and appearance of new hydrological resources like springs, from consequent landslides, the disappearance of forests as a direct effect f...

The theme approached in this paper is based on interdisciplinary information from disciplines such as geography (cartography, geology, geomorphology, climatology, and hydrology), history and biology. Interdisciplinary investigations were conducted in the Valea Oii watershed area of Romania, by teams that consisted of archaeologists and geographers....

In locating, human settlements take into account the physical and geographical factors of the targeted area. Generally, dwellings are placed in the upper sectors of the small watersheds. These represent the most uniform territorial entities from a geographic and strategic perspective. A substantial part of the environment is similar regarding the v...

Most of the archaeological sites in Moldavia are situated on hill borders, at the contact with lower landform units. This is why most archaeological sites are affected by the erosion of slopes, mostly the one caused by gully erosion. In order to realize the topographical measurements of the Cucuteni gully, LEICA TCR 1201 Total Station has been used...

Cuejdi river watershed (area: 97.41 km 2 ; max. altitude: 1213 m; min. altitude: 306; lenght: 29.11 km) left tributary of Bistrița river, drains the south-eastern part of the Central Group of Stânișoarei mountains, from the Central Group of Eastern Carpathians, Romania. The geographical position indicates a specific geological feature individualize...

En périphérie des Carpates orientales, la qualité,l’abondance et la relative disponibilité des ressourcesminérales comme agro-pastorales ont étéde puissants vecteurs de peuplement, tout particulièrement en Moldavie où le complexe culturelde Cucuteni-Tripolje signe, dès le milieu du Vèmemillénaire avant J.-C., l’épanouissement des économiesde produc...

Analysis models proposed in this paper represent a part of the results obtained from monitoring of the hydro-geomorphological risk potential identified in Băiceni – Cucuteni Museum gully. This activity started in 2008 when a series of detailed morphometric measurements were performed with high-quality instruments. In 2010 were added some hydrometri...

tThe rocky hill from Saharna Mare, situated at 1 km south-west of the present-day village of Saharna, constitutes the high terrace of the Dniester's right bank, with lofty and steep flanks on its northern, eastern, and south-eastern sides. With a surface area of ca. 12ha, the hill has witnessed human habitation since the end of the 2nd millennium B...

The archaeological site of Fulgeriş - La trei cireşi, belonging to the A3 phase of the Cucuteni culture, is situated in the south-eastern part of Bacǎu county, on a part of a cuesta of the Tutova Hillocks, at a relative altitude of 75 m. It is an elevated settlement, enjoying natural protection on three of its sides, with an approximate surface are...

Iezer lake was formed in the Sadova upper drainage basin, a left tributary of Moldova river, behind deluvial material from a massive landslide that blocked Iezer valley. Morphostructurally, the lake, together with the drainage basin belong to the flisch area within Carpathian mountains, that have a lithology that enhance mass movements. The lake bo...

In order to realize the topographical measurements in the perimeter of the Red Lake basin, LEICA TCR 1201 Total Station has been used. Together with LEICA GPS 1200, this station is part of SYSTEM 1200 LEICA. In order to start the measurements, the coordinates of the topographical marks were obtained from the Topographical Agency in Sf. Gheorghe. Th...