Methods to assess aesthetic value for forest planning and design

Transcription

1 Methods to assess aesthetic value for forest planning and design T. Panagopoulos and B. Ramos Department of Landscape Architecture, Faculty of Natural Recourses, University of Algarve,

2 INTRODUCTION In n forest planning little research devoted to examine how visual impact assessment may improve the public acceptance of forest activities. Aesthetic expectations ought to be considered in a thoughtful design. Forest managers are interested in scientifically based tools to assist in landscape evaluation. Objective of the present work is to review the methods of aesthetic assessment of forest landscapes, which will help the implementation of visual impact assessment in sustainable forestry.

3 Sustainability and Aesthetics Scenic landscapes are important components of the forest resource inventory and those landscapes should be identified and protected d in any forest development plan. Unplanned landscape modifications may cost in decrease of visitors. In addition, an a increasing demand for diverse and quality recreation is placing pressure on forest landscape and its management. A visual impact assessment should be prepared when the forest development plan is proposing harvesting, soil preparation, reforestation or road construction in scenic areas. Sustainable development was defined from Brundland (1987) as development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet their own needs. Criteria and specific indicators for sustainable forestry were delineated d at the Montreal Process (Oliver et al., 2001). One of the sustainable forest management indicators is the socioeconomic benefits of the forest. One of them is Landscape aesthetics.

4 visual impact assessment may improve the public acceptance of forest activities

5 Aesthetic response Aesthetic Value Visual Non-Visual Sound Smell Touch Emotion Beautiful: The Form: Proportion, Harmony, Balance, Unity, Order, Pattern & Rhythm, Variety, Grid, Simplicity, Articulation Complexity, Diversity, Axes, Etc. The Truth: Imitation, Style, Fashion, Mystic, Customs, Association, Integrity, Etc. The Good: Use & Function, Utility, Purpose, Convenience, Practical, Price, Comfort, Etc. The Context: Light, Memory, Clarity, and Colored. The Will: Emotional, Politic, Etc. The Modality: Purity, Experience, Imagination, Etc. Taste / Experience Sentimental The Trance Specialists Community Object of Memory Consciousnes The Genuine Sentimental + Trance Sublime The Will: Power, Grandeur, Vast, Spiritual, Elevate the Mind Extreme Light & Darkness Unlimited, Obscurity & Gloom Size, Terror, Incomprehensible, Difficult, Courage, Politics, Success & self- fulfillment, Originality. Picturesque The context: Variety, irregularity, asymmetry, landscape scene, light and shade, rise and fall, advance and recess, Pictorial Value of Architecture, combin ation of Townscape and Landscape, Medieval Ruins, age, Intri cacy, Complex texture, old forms of Buildings towns and shops, Functional Accretion, composition, nostalgia, association. Forests can be valued aestheticaly,, if they are beautiful, sublime or picturesque. To identify whether a forest is beautiful or not, a set of variables is to be investigated. These variables might be physical or not, they can be recognized visually and non-visually using our senses. The aesthetic value of a sustainable forest can be recognized when the specialists and the community recognize together, the attributes of the aesthetic variables.

6 Aesthetics in forest planning and management The idea of beautiful in landscapes has changed during the history of civilization. Symmetry and other classical rules such as the golden mean was the most important component of landscape beauty in Greek and Roman gardens two thousand years ago. The English garden, a much later development represents the naturalistic (natural-like) like) idea of landscape beauty, In the early Renaissance the wilderness and power of nature were symbolising the power of God and the sublime beauty. According to Botkin (1990) there is a connection between scientific discoveries, religious beliefs and ideas of landscape beauty.

7 Picturesque: asymetry, scene, nostalgic Beautiful: things that induce in us a sense of affection and tenderness Sublime: Burke said, is a pleasure that arises, from pain or fear

8 Giving a meaning to a place, making sustainable forest recognisable. Order and diversity are the necessary ingredients for impulsive response to beauty, but the key ingredient is the knowledge of the essence of the place and this usually is missing from the forests managed in a sustainable way. For Schopenhauer (1969), there is a great sense of beauty to be obtained if the scene expresses what he calls the idea, the essence of the place, or its spirit (Genius loci). Forest managers who apply sustainable forestry also create places by giving them a meaning. The problem is that most people do not recognise a sustainable forest.

9 Visual impact assessment Visual impact can be of an adverse or beneficial nature depending upon the circumstances; however, the visual effect of forest management tends to be perceived as predominantly negative. The exception is when sustainable forest practice leads to the creation of new and more vigorous and beautiful landscapes to what existed prior to intervention.

10 Landscape quality assessment Landscape quality assessment includes a wide range of environmental/ecological, socio-cultural cultural and psychological factors (Daniel, 2001). Landscape is the outdoor environment, natural or built, which can n be directly perceived by a person visiting and using that environment nt Scenic landscape is the subset of a landscape which is viewed from one vantage point looking in one direction. The term landscape focuses upon the visual properties of the environment which include natural and man-made made elements and physical and biological resources that could be identified visually, but also includes non-visual biological functions, cultural/historical values, wildlife and endangered species, wilderness value, opportunities for recreation activities and a large array of tastes, tes, smells and feelings, making that landscape only one of its kind.

11 Public perceptions of the impact of various forest operations on the aesthetic qualities of the landscape are assessed by measuring people s responses to variations in pattern and colour.

12 Diferent knowledge Diferent views

13 techniques of landscape evaluation Numerous techniques of landscape evaluation have been devised in recent years which may be subdivided by several ways. descriptive inventories public preference models, subjective/objective methods, quantitative/non-quantitative, quantitative, direct/indirect methods or ecological, formal aesthetic, psychophysical, psychological and phenomenological models (Briggs and France, 1980; Daniel and Vining,, 1983).

14 Direct techniques for aesthetic evaluation of landscapes In Descriptive inventory methodologies,, landscape components are analysed, described and combined in order to obtain a total value, implying g that overall scenic quality is the sum of its parts. These methods can provide quantitative assessments of landscape quality and a landscape inventory based on subjectively-selected selected but objectively-applied criteria are considered subjective and not precise. In Design expert approach, landscape is evaluated and inspected with respect to a combination of abstract design parameters considered relevant to landscape aesthetics (forms, lines, colours, textures and their interrelationships). The relationships between these elements used to classify each area in terms of variety, unity, u integrity or other complex formal characteristics. In the perception-based approach the scenic preferences of the public are valued for landscapes or components of the landscape in order to reach a consensus. In the ecological expert approach, landscape is characterised in terms of species, ecological zones, succession stage or other indicators of ecological processes. Ecological models are bio-centric, designed for specific areas only, favour undisturbed environments and separate between natural and human-influenced landscapes In the psychophysical approach, public preference surveys and landscape features inventories are combined and weighted. Weights for landscape components are estimated from preference ratings collected from the public. The weights, multiplied with a set of measurements of landscape components, produce an overall scenic quality score for other similar landscapes. Those methods use multiple regression analysis to establish a mathematical relationship between landscape components and scenic c preferences of observers.

15 Indirect techniques for aesthetic evaluation of landscapes Economists have developed various demand curve evaluation approaches that measure demand for landscape aesthetics. The full value of a good or service can be calculated by estimating ing the demand for it or by estimating how much of the good or service people would use at varying prices. The most important methods are: hedonic price method travel cost calculation, contingent valuation technique and choice modelling. The people preference is obtained via questionnaires or by examining purchases of market priced goods necessary to enjoy associated landscape goods.

16 Indirect techniques The hedonic price method In this method landscape components are valued against people's willingness to pay to live in particular types of landscape. The travel cost method is based in the idea that a quantity of visitors to a site would diminish as the cost to get there increases. This method uses u a sample of visitors to a site which embodies desired environmental attributes and asks them factual questions about the origin of their journey to the site, their mode of transport and about other costs incurred and their own socio-demographic characteristics (Bergin and Price, 1994). The Contingent Valuation Method is a stated preference method for placing monetary values upon environmental assets, which do not have market prices. This is achieved by constructing a hypothetical market and asking individuals ividuals what they are willing to pay towards preservation of a particular environmental ental good. In choice modelling several goods or attributes of goods are evaluated simultaneously, whereby the respondent having to express their priorities p over different combination of attribute levels, including price (Rolfe( et al., 2000). The main advantage of those willingness-to to-pay methods is that they attempt to value the benefits which residents and visitors might derive from alternative landscapes which could arise at some time in the future (Willis and Garrod,, 1993). The main disadvantages are their linearity and overestimation (ex: the impact of a landscape feature does not increase in proportion to its size).

17 Conclusions and future research The present work looked at the methods of landscape aesthetic assessment and their link to sustainability. It is suggested, facilitation of the public participation in sustainable forest planning and management. Further investigation on the use of photorealistic images and virtual reality simulations in order to promote public perception n of aesthetic quality and forest sustainability. Finally, it is suggested to start research in the use of statistical ical tools such as geostatistics and principle component analysis, to assist in the discovery of appropriate criteria and map-based indicators of ecological change that identify where the relationships to aesthetic and visual landscape preferences occur.