ABSTRACT
For open-air rock-art, whether inside or outside a protected area, a full understanding of all the natural physical and chemical deterioration factors affecting the motifs and symbols and the rate at which they act is required in order to develop suitable conservation strategies that minimize the loss of this important heritage while maintaining visibility for visitors. Such understandings usually involve the analyses of the rock substrates based on geological science, but results from such work can also be combined with other scientific disciplines, such as dedicated mathematical modelling, to allow qualitative and quantitative predictions of how rock-art panels are affected by a range of natural phenomena.
