This document outlines our approach to the development of the Environmental Change research agenda chapter for the CVARF area. It builds on the 2015 work of Tipping, Living with Environmental Change –Towards an Environmental History of Clydesdale, one of the essays on the Local History and Archaeology of West Central Scotland. This work provides a comprehensive study of environmental change in the past structured around several key research themes: Coastal Change, Climate Change, Vegetation and Land Use, Geomorphological Change; with a short Integration section reflecting on weaknesses in the data and potential future focuses of research. As such our approach is not to duplicate the information in this report, but to complement it through a critical review and refresh considering any significant discoveries or wider research insights since its original publication.
One issue since the 2015 essay which has become more urgent is the impacts on communities and archaeological heritage through current and future climate change (eg HES 2019), so part of our baseline process will include modelling this. Coastal change has been included with marine elements to discuss the potential of coastal floods to impact heritage assets as well as marine sites such as crannogs and shipwrecks to be altered or washed away from increasing wave and flow rates in the Clyde Estuary. As well, there is discussion of the growing interest of river meandering to combat projected future river floods. There has been little research of climate change in the past within the Clyde Valley which can be discussed so instead this chapter shows how impacts of the present climate crisis led to development of windfarms, reforestation, river restoration and even climate driven morphological change in the Clyde Estuary is an opportunity for archaeologists.