Calakmul 4DGIS: an Information Management System for the Conservation of Natural and Cultural Heritage

Funded by the Belgian Science Policy Office (BELSPO) in the framework of a collaboration agreement with UNESCO, the Calakmul 4D GIS project aims at developing and implementing an “Information Management System” for the conservation authorities of the Biosphere Reserve and Archaeological Urban Centre of Calakmul (Mexico). This online system will allow Mexican managers of Natural and Cultural Heritage to store, share, visualise and create interaction between their data, in order to coordinate various actions of conservation, management, planning, monitoring and research undertaken in the area.

The name “Calakmul” refers to an ecological reserve including an ancient Maya city. The study zone lies in the South East of the Campeche State, in the middle of the Yucatan peninsula. The Calakmul Biosphere Reserve was created in 1989. It covers an area of almost 7.300 square kilometers and constitutes one of the largest protected forests of the tropical zones. This biodiversity hotspot shelters rare species of flora and fauna. It also includes many archaeological sites, Calakmul being the most important one. This pre-Colombian city has been registered on the World Heritage List (cultural part) in 2002.

Within recent years, settlement pressure, farming, extraction of commercial timber, tourism, etc. caused threats to this natural and cultural heritage. In order to help the Mexican authorities INAH (Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia) and CONANP (Comision Nacional de Areas Naturales Protegidas) to preserve it, Belgian researchers conducted a R&D project based on the use of new technologies and scientific developments in the GeoICT, Archaeomatic and Spatio-temporal Analysis, Computer Vision and Earth Observation fields.

The developed information management system is centred on an online tool integrating 2D GIS layers and 3D objects, large and small scales cartography layers and the time dimension. It also includes a set of open source tools to create, store, catalogue, share and disseminate data and is based on emerging open standards, but also innovative methods and data models to integrate archaeological and ecological data containing time attributes.

Earth Observation data from Formosat 2 and SPOT sensors has been used to analyse the evolution of the land use/land cover in the area and to investigate the potential of remote sensing to document Maya ruins and detect evidences of the presence of archaeological remains in a tropical forest environment. This data set has been processed using innovative object-based image analysis techniques. The results will be integrated in the system and used to elaborate posters for educational purposes.