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Here's your chance to hear CyArk's founder Ben Kacyra speak about CyArk's work to digitally preserve the California Missions and El Camino Real, as well as other global heritage sites in the CyArk 500.

CyArk has been selected as one of seven finalists in EMC's Heritage Trust Project. The EMC Heritage Trust Project recognizes and supports digital stewardship of the world's information heritage in local communities.

On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the most infamous maritime disaster of all time, CyArk is proud to announce the launch of the Titanic Database Project. The project is the result of Director James Cameron's generous donation of dive footage and countless hours of expert volunteers.

How do we archive heritage documentation so we can be confident we'll be able to retrieve this information next year, in 5 years, in 50 years or 500 years? The United States Library of Congress requires physical, durable materials for heritage documentation; the standard is ink-on-mylar and large format black and white photographs.

In a continued effort to bring the best tools for digital preservation to our workflow, CyArk has finalized an MOU with Technodigit, the makers of 3DReshaper meshing software. CyArk began testing the software on select projects in 2011 and its power and robust ability to create clean, accurate meshes easily from laser scan data has brought it into our regular workflow for data processing and deliverables creation.

CyArk’s Founder, Ben Kacyra, will be speaking at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on May 10th. The United States' oldest and largest public affairs forum, the Commonwealth Club, presents 400 impartial discussions and talks annually to the public and its members on the subjects of politics, economics, culture, and society.

As a non-profit, CyArk is a recipient of free licenses for SketchUp Pro through Google's SketchUp for Nonprofits program. Google's SketchUp team recently approached us to write a blog about how we utilize their 3D modeling software toward our mission of digital preservation, education, and dissemination.

CyArk is in the running for a $10,000 advertising grant from Facebook! If won, this grant could drastically help increase our social media presence to spread the word of our mission and foster advocacy for the digital preservation and dissemination of our cultural heritage.

February 19th marks the 70th anniversary of the signing of Executive Order 9066 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1942. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States military became wary of the large Japanese-American population on the West Coast.

CyArk has partnered with Ronald Rael, a Professor of Architecture at UC Berkeley, to test a new innovation in the field of rapid prototyping as well as to test our ability to produce media fit for physical production.

Season's Greetings, As 2011 comes to a close, I want to reach out and thank you for your support and contributions over this past year, and to ask you for your continued help as we formally launch The CyArk 500 Challenge.

As part of a continued partnership between CyArk and The University of Colorado Denver’s Center of Preservation Research (CoPR) in the College of Architecture and Planning, we have teamed up again to help document Japanese American Confinement Sites across the country.

For over a year, CyArk has been based in downtown Oakland, home to many amazing Art Deco architectural masterpieces. We are fortunate to have our office in the famous Breuner Building. It was designed in 1931 by Albert Roller during the heyday of the Art Deco movement.

As you may already know, CyArk has been enthusiastically making progress on the project to digitally preserve three out of ten War Relocation Authority Relocation Centers from World War II. Under a grant from the National Park Service's Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant Program, the Topaz Relocation Center was the first to get laser scanned in August, followed by Manzanar in September.

The Scottish Ten team and CyArk began work scanning Rani Ki Vav stepwell in Patan, Gujarat, India this week. This project is the second international site of the Scottish Ten. The first international project was Mt.

We are proud to announce that CyArk has surpassed a million visits on our website for the year. At the close of September we had already reached 1.06 million visits. This same time last year we were at about 600,000 views.

Last week marked the always exciting Digital Documentation conference in Glasgow, Scotland. This was the third year of the conference, now shortened to Digidoc, and was truly the best conference yet. CyArk has been very proud to partner and participate in the conference since inception with the key organizing partners Historic Scotland and the Glasgow School of Art.

After a great deal of work, CyArk is proud to announce the release of our first iPad app in the iTunes Store. (EDIT: It has subsequently been released for iPhones as well). The Fort Laramie app is available for download here.

On a typical cool Bay Area summer morning, the CyArk team made its way to the Presidio of San Francisco to capture some of the oldest walls ever built in the city. At the heart of the Presidio, these walls make up the structure called the Officers' Club.

Last December, CyArk, with the help of its partners, conducted the field work for the Digital Preservation of three culturally significant Hawaiian sites. Those sites, or wahi pana ("place(s) of significant meaning" in Hawaiian), were Hulihe'e Palace, which was the summer residence of the Hawaiian royal family, Ahu'ena Heiau, which was Kamehameha the Great's personal temple, and portions of the Pu'uhonua o Honaunau (Place of Refuge) National Park, which served as a sanctuary to those fleeing from capture or punishment.

St. Kilda becomes the most recent addition to the Scottish Ten. Earlier this month, CyArk's partner, the Centre for Digital Documentation and Visualization (comprised of Historic Scotland and the Glasgow School of Art's Digital Design Studio (GSA)) traveled to the remote island of St Kilda in the far corner of the North Atlantic Ocean.

Ben Kacyra spoke to a crowd of over 600 people at the TEDGlobal conference in Edinburgh earlier this month. Speaking on the final day of the conference, Ben Kacyra spoke about CyArk and the need to preserve our collective human memory.

As a historic preservationist, I realize that large and gorgeously-designed buildings and monuments and archaeological ruins of bygone civilizations usually grab the public’s attention, and rightfully so.

After creating educational activities and other content for the Tutuveni petroglyph site, I have become inspired to learn more about rock art. In different corners of the world over vast stretches of time, rock art has served as forms of communication, record-keeping, and ceremony.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa at Piazza del Duomo is one of the most recognizable wonders of the world. But with hundreds of years of stress, pollution, tourists and pigeons, the Tower was in need of some help.

This spring, CyArk hosted an in house workshop for the Digital Preservation Project at Tutuveni, a Hopi petroglyph site in Arizona. The project was made possible through the generous support of the World Monuments Fund.

As a young, non-profit organization, CyArk thrives on volunteers and student interns. Internship programs allow us to teach the next generation of digital preservation specialists. We also learn from the interns who bring fresh ideas and knowledge of the latest technologies.

The annual Leica Geosystems HDS Worldwide User Conference has officially been merged with the annual Hexagon conference. This merge joins Leica with its new family affiliates under the Hexagon umbrella, including ERDAS and Integraph.

Earlier this year the CyArk team traveled to Rhode Island to digitally preserve the Marble House— one of the famous Newport Mansions built as a “summer cottage” during the late 1800’s. The home, built for William Vanderbilt and his wife Alva, contains a space, hailed as the Gothic Room, which was designed specifically to hold the couples’ Medieval and Renaissance art collection.

In March I traveled to Edinburgh and Glasgow to meet with our partners from the Centre of Digital Documentation and Visualization (CDDV), which is comprised of Historic Scotland's Conservation Group and Glasgow School of Arts' Digital Design Studio.

CyArk is excited to provide access to Spanish speakers through the launch of our Spanish website Fotografía del Sistema IV en Monte Albán (Photograph of System IV at Monte Albán) El archivo digital de CyArk continua creciendo con cada nuevo sitio de patrimonio que es documentado.

This year's spar conference had perhaps the largest showing of heritage presentations in recent years. CyArk has worked with Spar closely over the last few years to organize the heritage component of the conference.

Since its tragic descent to two and a half miles below the North Atlantic on April 14th, 1912, the RMS Titanic has been gradually deteriorating along the ocean floor. Recently, the scientific community has discovered that the ship is decaying at an alarming rate and may be gone within 15 years because of a previously unknown bacteria.

I've just completed a week long trip to South Africa where I met with our new partners, the African Conservation Trust (ACT) and the Geomatics department of the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN). Together ACT and UKZN have established a close relationship in which UKZN has received grants from the South African National Lottery system to conduct various heritage and environmental conservation projects.

Very soon CyArk will be launching the Digital Preservation Project at San Antonio Missions National Historical Park live on our website. Located along the San Antonio River in Texas, the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park encompasses five Spanish Colonial sites: Mission La Purísima Concepción de Acuña, Mission San Francisco de la Espada, Mission San José de Aguayo, Mission San Juan de Capistrano, and the Espada Aqueduct.

CyArk recently traveled to Rapid City, SD to meet with senior park staff to discuss the Mount Rushmore National Memorial Digital Preservation Project. This project is a 5 year partnership between the National Park Service and KFF/ CyArk to provide both engineering-grade data for tasks such as rock-block monitoring, analysis, and site resource management as well as a base data set to create virtual tourism and educational materials for public outreach and data dissemination.

Last week (Nov 29-Dec 4) saw the culmination of months of planning to bring Digital Preservation to the islands of Hawai'i. Through the concerted efforts of new allies and old partners, CyArk was able to conduct the documentation phase for the Digital Preservation of three culturally significant sites, or wahi pana (a "place" of significant meaning).

By this time, many are familiar with the story of our field collection efforts at Mt. Rushmore. After meticulously sorting through and editing 2.5 weeks of field data the CyArk team and our partners at CDDV are ready to offer a glimpse of our progress.

Objectives: One of the biggest goals we had in mind was to make our vast archive of content more easily accessible and better organized. We have added more information to our media elements so you are now able to view our media via the subnavigation bar at the top of most pages.

Three of us from the CyArk team just returned from spending a week in the Arizona desert digitally documenting two Hopi petroglyph sites, Tutuveni and Dawa Park. Tutuveni is the primary site of the project and is a great example of the power of the World Monuments Fund Watch List.

My name is Lee Wayne Lomayestewa, I work in the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office of the Hopi Tribe as a Research Assistant. The Hopi Cultural Preservation met previously with the CyArk crew and other agencies including the World Monuments Fund, The Navajo Nation, Arizona Public Service, and the Petrified National Forest.

Last Friday, October 8th, CyArk's technology and content were highlighted at the final InOak event of the year. As taken from the InOak website, "INOAK was created in 2010 by a handful of innovative new companies based in Oakland, California with a single purpose; to expand and strengthen a thriving community of innovative new companies through collaboration and community.

Over the last year, we have developed a very close partnership with the Center of Preservation Research (CoPR) at the University of Colorado, Denver. The partnership which began with our work together on Fort Laramie, has expanded to the creation of a technology center at Denver with 3D laser scanning capacity.

This post was written by Erwin Christofori of Christofori und Partner after he and his team scanned St. Anne's Church. Erwin has worked on 3D laser scanning projects around the world, including several projects in the CyArk Archive.

After the successful completion of the Mt. Rushmore Project, the Scottish Ten has begun work on the next project in Scotland. Beginning August 13th, the team has been hard at work capturing the UNESCO World Heritage Sites of Neolithic Orkney.

Teotihuacán, a highly influential but still very mysterious epicenter in the pre-Columbian world, has recently revealed a tunnel sealed off since its cultural prime. Yesterday, the Herald reported that Mexican archaeologists found a tunnel forty feet below the surface of the Pyramid of Quetzalcoatl.

This post was written by Dirk Häusleigner of Christofori und Partner before departing for Vilnius. Dirk has worked on 3D laser scanning projects around the world, including several projects in the CyArk Archive.

After several weeks on the road, I am back at CyArk headquarters in Oakland, CA. The biggest event over the last few weeks has been the completion of our work at Mt. Rushmore. During the project, Mt.

In mid-May I was privileged to be a part of a truly and literally monumental project: the Digital Preservation of Mount Rushmore. CyArk partnered with the Scottish Centre for Digital Documentation and Visualisation (CDDV), US National Park Service (NPS), and several local organizations (Wyss and Associates, RESPEC Engineering, and the South Dakota School of Mines and Engineering) to bring state-of-the-art survey and documentation techniques to this American Icon.

Things have been very busy at CyArk lately. Between our office move last month and our on-going projects, we have not been very diligent about our blogging. We hope to improve this through upcoming field blogs and updates.

Last week we attended the annual Spar conference on 3D imaging and capture technologies. I have had the opportunity to attend this event for the past 3 years, and it is always a great experience. Spar offers an opportunity to learn about the emerging technologies in 3D capture, connect with old partners, gain insight about best practices and methodologies, and spark new relationships.

Last year CyArk partnered with World Monuments Fund (WMF) to Digitally Preserve the renowned cloister of Saint-Trophime, one of the multiple structures within the historic center of Arles, France inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

The recent earthquake in Haiti has devastated a nation and caused immeasurable loss of life. Thankfully, the world has responded en masse. Donations, supplies, and aid workers have flown in from all corners of the world to help ease human suffering.

Imagine a dark, dank, cavernous yet cramped space. The air inside hangs heavy; the heat lingers. Each busy day can usher in as many as 1000 people, although the average height of the chamber measures only about 12 ft.

Rising above the plains of western New Mexico is a series of sandstone bluffs called El Morro, Spanish for ‘the headlands’. The location of a stable water source, it became a popular pit-stop along the trails crisscrossing the American southwest: a temporary campground for hundreds of souls throughout the centuries.

About the Author Parveen Talpur is a New York based writer and historian. Her research at Cornell University (1990-97) focused on the decipherment of Moen jo Daro seal symbols. The results of her research are published in the Wisconsin Archaeological Reports, Vol 3, 1994, Department of Anthropology University of Wisconsin, Madison.

This December I experienced an incredibly packed 5 days of Scottish heritage. As part of the Scottish 10, I traveled to Scotland to become more familiar with the 5 Scottish sites to will be included in the project.

Field work has just ended and I am currently in Mexico with our Director of Projects, Liz Lee, and CyArk partner (and friend) Frank Collazo of Leica Geosystems HDS. We have come to the wonderous site of Teotihuacan in collaboration with Mexico's INAH and the World Monuments Fund in order to Digitally Preserve the Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent, Quetzalcoatl.

With the help of our partners and the support of people like you, CyArk has made 8 new projects available on our website in the past year. Among others, these projects include the oasis city of Ancient Merv, the stone moai of Rapa Nui (Easter Island), the Kasubi Tombs in Uganda, and the Zapotec ruins of Monte Alban.

CyArk is proud to announce our upcoming project with the National Parks Service to digitally preserve the Missions of San Antonio. Our work at the National Historic Park will include the missions Nuestra Senora de la Purisima Concepción de Acuna, San José y San Miguel de Aguayo, San Juan de Capistrano, San Francisco de la Espada, as well as the Espada Aqueduct.

CyArk would like your help determining how to best display our new 3D models. These light-weight site representations are a great visualization tool for teachers, students, and researchers, and enable exciting new opportunities to showcase sites as they were originally built.

In the prior chapters of this CyArk blog series, we have talked about the idea of the year 2012: What it means to modern people, and what it may have meant to the Classic Period Maya of Central America.

As part of the preparatory work for the Mt. Rushmore Digital Preservation project, this week I traveled to Rapid City South Dakota. The purpose of the trip was to meet with park staff as well as our local partners on the project Wyss and Associates and Respec Engineering to discuss the establishment of a park-wide survey control network.

This entry is Section C of the three-section Part IV of the 2012 Blog Series from CyArk (click here for Section A and here for Section B)...Yes, that is a bit convoluted, but so is the Maya calendar itself (at least to our eyes), so be aware that these entries are a bit challenging - You could also stick to the Bold Text if you want a quick overview.

This is Section B of the three-section Part IV of the 2012 Blog Series from CyArk (click here for Section A)...Yes, that is a bit confusing, but so is the Maya calendar - at least to our eyes. Be aware that these next two entries are going to be a bit challenging.

We have discussed some aspects of the public fascination, hype and hysteria surrounding the upcoming date of December 21 (or 23!), 2012 over the previous posts in this series: Introduction, Millenarianism, and Pan-Shamanism.

We are pleased to announce the arrival of a new data set to the CyArk Archive. Working with Historic Scotland, the Digital Design Studio at the Glasgow School of Art, and the Rosslyn Chapel Trust, CyArk will be disseminating 3D data of the chapel collected as part of a digital documentation project.

CyArk is very pleased to announce the development of a new partnership with Pointools. The UK-based company creates high-end point cloud editing and rendering software. We are excited to be working closely with the Pointools team in our continued efforts to improve the quality of our data as well as expand our ever-growing international Partner Network.

The Give a Point Cloud, Get a Point Cloud contest is mostly for those attending the Leica Geosystems User Conference this past week. But really, anyone can enter if they'd like. The rules are really simple: Send a jpeg, tiff, gif, png, or any other image file to me at dan.

The two prior entries to the 2012: Truth, Fiction, and the Popular Imagination blog series introduced us to some questions surrounding the year 2012 and began to explore some of the sources of confusion as to what it means, starting with Millenariansm.

That’s right, I’m out of the CyArk office and out in the field. Over the last few months while I have been working part time in the CyArk offices, I have also been working from a distance to complete a research based Masters in Archaeology and Heritage from University of Leicester.

Last week the World Monuments Fund (WMF) announced their biennial "Watch List" for 2010. Every two years the WMF releases a list of the world's 100 most endangered sites, be they endangered from excess tourism, environmental impacts, war, development, or other issues, in order to bring attention to he sites' needs.

With this second installment of 2012: Truth, Fiction, and the Popular Imagination (Part One - Introduction was last week's blog), we turn our gaze towards our own perceptions of The End Of The World as a phenomenon.

You may or may not have noticed CyArk's presence in a few new places around the web. We have begun making a concerted effort to reach out to a broader internet audience by spreading the CyArk mission on social sites like Twitter and Facebook.

This is the first post of a multi-part blog series from CyArk on the 2012 phenomenon that has exploded across popular literature, the internet, television, and now film. As the date itself has its base in an ancient calendar of the Maya people of Central America, we hope to provide an archaeological/anthropological critique of the phenomenon and perhaps clear up some misconceptions.

Hello from Fort Laramie (and Torrington), Wyoming! CyArk is currently in the field working to Digitally Preserve the Fort Laramie National Historic Site. Fort Laramie was once an important hub point for the American expansion into the west.

Welcome to Take Five, a new blog feature in which your host, Lili, showcases CyArk's top five photos in a given theme. Today we take a few looks at religious imagery from around the world: Germany, Cambodia, Egypt, Italy, and Brazil.

The idea of recycling is far more ancient than many would think. For millennia, people have reused everything; metal, clothing, and yes, even ancient monuments. Current trends in archaeological thought revel in the idea of an archaeological landscape: one which has been built up over millennia, interacting with culture after culture, each of whom has left their mark on a site or collection of sites.

Ever hear the old joke about the man who tried to forge ancient coins, but got caught when scholars noticed they were stamped “52 BC”? Archaeologists hear this joke and give a wistful sigh. If only it were so simple! If only every excavated find came with a tag, complete with the date it was built or created! No more messing around with radioactive isotopes and the carbon cycle; no more bickering between professors over whether a certain type of bowl belongs to the Late Minoan IIIA or IIIB period.

Recently CyArk has been fortunate to grow in our work force through the generous contributions of our volunteers. They have all greatly increased our productivity and have proven invaluable to us during a time of growth and flux as we gear up for some impressive new partnerships—including the globally covered, upcoming Mt Rushmore Digital Preservation project.

A series of devastating fires near Athens, Greece, have burned scores of homes and tens of thousands of hectares of pine forest and olive groves. They also placed several important archaeological sites in grave jeopardy, according to Greek officials.

There is some heritage and culture that cannot be laser scanned into 3D images. Music has its own distinct and emotional cultural legacy, and it was composer Dr. Albert Ssempeke who used his knowledge of royal music to capture the essence of Bugundan tradition.

Time is relative. Different cultures around the world record time in different fashions. According to the Gregorian calendar, it is the year 2009 AD. But according to the Hebrew calendar it is 5769.

In February of 2009, a joint effort between Provide Solutions, LLC and Plowman Craven brought Mr. Scott Cedarleaf to Kampala, Uganda. There, he conducted a Digital Preservation project at the UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Tombs of the Bugandan Kings at Kasubi.

With the popularization of scientific analysis on television shows like CSI and Law and Order, it seems science can tell us everything these days. It can solve every crime and decipher every riddle. Partial fingerprints? No problem, they’ll catch the baddie with reconstructed prints.

Rapa Nui, a small volcanic island and province of Chile more commonly known as Easter Island, is home to one of humanity's most enigmatic and instantly-recognizable archaeological landscapes. First settled by Polynesian colonists during the first millennium C.

With the launch of Rapa Nui this afternoon, CyArk celebrates the 25th project to be digitally preserved and made publicly available via the web. We thought this silver anniversary of sorts called for a bit of celebration and perhaps a history lesson.

A visit to the Bavarian city of Weißenburg is like taking a step back in time. There are ancient Roman ruins to be explored, Renaissance influences to be experienced, and Gothic architecture to be examined.

Although it’s taken much of the world quite some time to jump on the conservation bandwagon, it seems the Classic Mayan civilization was practicing good environmental management policies well before the 7th century AD.

The University of San Francisco, my alma mater, has been steadily making remarkable improvements to a number of the buildings on campus since my graduation in 2006. The newly renamed Kalmonowitz Hall is one such building.

Amidst the Independence Day celebrations at Mt. Rushmore, another event with international implications was taking place. Almost 10 hours before the famous fireworks, a special press conference was held in Borglum's Sculptor's studio.

CyArk is pleased to announce the web-launch of our latest project, the Zapotec capital of Monte Albán, Mexico. This project was made possible through the generous collaboration of the Instituto Nacional de Antroplogía e Historia (INAH) of Mexico.

We at CyArk, love 3D and maps; especially when those two things involve cultural heritage. I've compiled a list below of some of the best 3D models of World Heritage Sites and historic locations that are currently in Google Earth.

In May 2008 a highly skilled 3D survey team from the German firm Christofori und Partner travelled to the historic city of Regensburg, Germany. Regensburg has over 1000 historic landmarks within its ‘old city’, which has led to this important cultural center being enlisted as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Work finished a little earlier than expected so I decided to take an opportunity to do an official blog from the field during a late breakfast at the hotel. I am writing from Arles, a small historic town in the Provence region of southern France.

On May 8, 2009 officials in the Ancash region of Peru announced the discovery of stone tenon heads estimated to be 4,000 years old. The tenon heads were discovered in the Huaylas district at an archaeological site near the town of Chupacoto.

Below Rome, Italy, burrowed into the soft yet durable volcanic tufa rock, are over 170km (105 miles) of winding catacombs. There are over 40 individual catacombs, dating back two millennia, which were carved out as protected burial sites for the religiously persecuted--the Christians, Jews, and Pagans--during a span of over three centuries.

In only its second year, the Digital Documentation conference, coordinated by the Digital Design Studio at the Glasgow School of Art and in association with Historic Scotland, Leica Geosystems, Hexagon Metrology, Glasgow City Council and CyArk, more than doubled in size and played host to delegates and speakers from around the world.

Last week I had the honor of representing CyArk at the ATHENA project kick-off meeting in Amman Jordan. I only spent three days in the country but I had a wonderful experience meeting new partners and exploring some of the heritage sites.

On April 6, 2009, a 6.3 magnitude earthquake occurred in the central Italian region of Abruzzo. The quake is the deadliest earthquake to strike Italy since 1980. L'Aquila, capital city of Abruzzo, and surrounding villages have sustained significant damages and losses.

Two of the largest conferences of their kind were held back-to-back this year in the United States. The Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology (CAA) conference is one of the largest, bringing together high-tech archaeologists from around the world.

Ten days ago at the archaeological site Adamkayalar in the Şeytan Valley of Turkey, a group of looters damaged eleven rock-wall relief niches when they detonated dynamite. The Mersin University Klikia Archaeological Research Center has reported the situation on their website and to local police.

In March 2009, I travelled within the SF Bay Area to a shipyard in Alameda, CA. There I met with a team from UC Berkeley’s Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER) consisting of Dr. Shakhzod Takhirov and Mr.

A set of early human footprints discovered in Africa reveal that 1.5 million years ago prehistoric humans walked upright in a manner very similar to modern humans. The report was released by the journal Science and described the findings of an international team led by professor Matthew Bennett of Bournemouth University in the United Kingdom.

Urbanization, the last entry in this CyArk series, is of special concern to those of us who understand the great value of cultural heritage sites. In a sense, urbanization is the reason for and the culmination of many of the ills discussed in the previous four blogs; as cities grow and develop, more and more people around the globe move from simpler, rural ways of life into modern industrialized urban ones.

In the 1930s a great archaeological discovery was made: a group of tens of thousands of clay tablets, ranging from nugget-sized to place mat-sized, describing the daily internal life of the Persian Empire.

Cultural artifacts are a funny lot. They tend to move around frequently, and in doing so become ambassadors of a particular culture to the entire world. It's a wonderful thing that a child in France can learn about ancient China simply by going to a museum a few blocks from her home.

In this continuing series by CyArk, we explore just a few of the world's most endangered heritage sites in several categories, separated by the general nature of the hazards they face. This week, we take a look at the urgent problem of desertification, an under-publicized but dramatic effect of environmental degradation and climate change.

In this continuing series by CyArk, we explore just a few of the world's most endangered heritage sites in several categories, separated by the general nature of the hazards they face. In this week's category, Tourism, we confront a complex issue: How can we properly protect fragile sites that are so beloved by the public that their future is now at risk from overuse? Increased tourism (or the promise of it) is often the driving force behind the highest-profile efforts aimed at preserving cultural heritage sites, and it has likely saved many sites that may have been otherwise neglected or destroyed.

In this continuing series by CyArk, we explore just a few of the world's most endangered heritage sites in several categories, separated by the general nature of the hazards they face. One of the most severe and looming threats to ancient heritage is posed by the byproducts of industrial contamination of the environment in which these sites endure.

As has unfortunately been demonstrated time and time again, some of the world's greatest cultural heritage sites are critically at risk of destruction. From the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan to the Namademun Gate in South Korea to countless ancient sites in the massive area flooded by the Three Gorges Dam in China, peoples' actions and the destructive potential of natural elements have caused irreparable harm to some of the most important works that humankind has created.

Usually, when a government tries to gain UNESCO World Heritage status for one of their country's sites, they pour resources into reinforcing crumbling walls or stifling erosion. China likes to do things a little differently, however.

I have been a CyArk intern for over a year now, and I am currently a senior anthropology major at the University of California at Berkeley. I have spent my summers excavating in the Belize jungles but for the past two months I have been conducting research in the CyArk offices.

Last week I traveled to Amman, Jordan to give a paper at the Digital Media Applications in Cultural Heritage (DMACH) conference. DMACH 2008 was hosted by the Center for Study of Architecture in the Arab Region (CSAAR), and held jointly with their annual CSAAR conference.

We've recently launched a few, new features in an effort to help keep everyone informed and "in the loop" regarding CyArk's activities, news, and upcoming projects. The first and most notable edition is the news feed on the home page.

I am traveling on a southbound train to London after an exciting two day workshop at Durham University. With WiFi access on the trains I figured this was the perfect opportunity for an on-the-road blog.

Four full days in the field resulted in lots of scan data, lots of photos, and lots of scrapes and bruises but little energy left to blog. In an effort to make this the first official CyArk blog from the field, I am writing this from the airport in Mexico City.

CyArk recently partnered with the University of San Francisco, Leica Geosystems, and INSIGHT to digitally reconstruct a 16th century stone portal. The portal was originally part of the monastery of Santa Maria de Ovila in northern Spain.

The Republic of Korea has suffered the loss of one of its greatest national historic treasures. Seoul’s 610 year-old Namdaemun (Great Southern Gate) was set ablaze by an arsonist on the evening of FebruaryIl casino è anche fair play.

The documentation of sites of cultural heritage made a strong showing, among the usual industrial applications for laser scanning, at the Leica Geosystems User Conference held in San Ramon, California October 22-24.

I have just returned from Turkmenistan after a six-week collaboration with the Ancient Merv Project for its 2007 field season. The ongoing project by the Institute of Archaeology (IoA) at University College London (UCL) is in collaboration with the State Historical and Cultural Park Ancient Merv and this year expanded its collaboration to include the professional UK surveying firm Plowman Craven and Associates (PCA) and CyArk.

CyArk team memebers Ben Kacyra and Elizabeth Lee recently traveled to Mesa Verde National Park as part of an on location shoot for the new PBS show, Wired Science. In addition to giving interviews about CyArk’s mission and documentation methods, the team preformed a High Definition Documentation of the alcove site Square Tower House.

Introduction Among the academics and scientists of the world, there is a great deal of uncertainty regarding the specifics of predicting global warming. However, there is one thing that they all agree on; global warming is happening and sea levels will rise if we continue on our current course.

CyArk announces its newest feature, a fully interactive Hazard Map showing inundation levels and plotting previously recorded earthquakes. Everyday, global warming is becoming more and more of a reality and one of the many consequences of this is glacial melt which is slowly but surely raising the current sea level.

I have been receiving questions from fellow colleagues well as the public concerning the Hazard Map. I have complied a list of a few relevant questions and have included answers for your reading pleasure.

Last week the CyArk offices received a visit from San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer Tom Abate. Mr. Abate is a Science and Technology writer for the Chronicle and was particularly interested in the mechanics behind the laser scanner and the innovations taking place at CyArk today.

Great Pyramid of Giza, Hanging Gardens of Babylon, Temple of Artemis, Statue of Zeus at Olympia, Mausoleum of Maussollos, Colossus of Rhodes and the Lighthouse of Alexandria - of the original Seven Wonders of the World, only one remains.