Rethinking Immovable Cultural Heritage Within One Health: An Ecophysical Perspective

Immovable cultural heritage, including archaeological sites, historic buildings, and long-standing landscape structures, is typically interpreted through historical, aesthetic, and identity-based perspectives. This paper proposes an alternative reading, situating heritage within the broader context of coupled environmental, biological, and human systems. Grounded in non-equilibrium thermodynamics and system ecology, the study advances an ecophysical perspective in which heritage is understood as a persistent structural and informational component of the human niche. Drawing on evidence from building physics, landscape ecology, environmental psychology, and health-related research, this paper discusses the scientific plausibility of heritage-mediated effects, including environmental buffering, habitat stabilization, and cognitive and physiological regulation. These heterogeneous processes are reinterpreted within a unified conceptual framework, HEROS (HERitage One Health System), which links observable indicators to underlying mechanisms of organization and dissipation. A simplified stock–flow formulation, consistent with ecophysics and system ecology literature, is introduced to illustrate how heritage may influence dissipation across environmental, animal, and human subsystems. Rather than presenting a fully operational model, this perspective aims to reposition heritage within One Health and sustainability frameworks, highlighting its potential role in supporting system stability, resilience, and long-term continuity.