Easter Island’s iconic moai statues face an existential threat from rising sea levels, with powerful seasonal waves predicted to inundate the 15 monumental figures at Ahu Tongariki by the end of the century, according to a new study. The research, published in the Journal of Cultural Heritage, also warns that approximately 50 other cultural sites on the remote Pacific island are at risk of flooding.
"Sea level rise is real," stated Noah Paoa, lead author of the study and a doctoral student at the University of Hawaii at Manoa’s School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology. "It’s not a distant threat." Mr Paoa, of Easter Island (known to its Indigenous people as Rapa Nui), and his team created a high-resolution "digital twin" of the island’s eastern coastline, running computer models to simulate future wave impacts under various sea level rise scenarios.
