When I read the title of the Feed Your Brain talks I was uninterested. They sounded boring. I went to the talk titled "Geosciences Save UNESCO Heritage." I was curious to hear about the application of geoscience in saving monuments across the globe. The speaker, Claudio Margottini, is a geologist and engineering seismologist. His talk took us all across Asia, the middle East, and South America. Over 70% of monuments are susceptible to natural destruction. That is a lot of potential for monuments to be destroyed.
In Afghanistan, giant Buddhist statues had been destroyed. In order to preserve what was left of the monument, a survey of the surrounding rocks was completed then locals were trained to scale the cliff and repair the rocks so that it did not collapse. This area was especially interesting because the Taliban was sending threats, in the form of bombs, to the people trying to repair the area.
Mr. Margottini spoke about how terrified for his life he was when he seen rocks painted red indicating a bomb was near. He had to work with the thought of losing his life everyday that he was there. In order to preserve certain monuments, he has put himself in danger. There were other monuments he spoke of that they had to design the recovery plans in Europe and give the plans to local engineers because it was too dangerous for them to go.
It was very inspiring to hear of the work that he was doing across the world. Some places were very peaceful and gave the workers medals for their work. In Machu Picchu, they determined that the city was not going to be destroyed by a landslide. In other places, they were a third party paid to save monuments. Mr. Margottini used a lot of different techniques and technology on all of the projects. I really enjoyed the talk and would love the opportunity to learn more about working with UNESCO.
-Jurnee West
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