Åsa Ode

Indicators of perceived naturalness as drivers of landscape preference

The concept of naturalness is one of the more studied concepts in landscape preference research and describes how close a landscape is to a perceived natural state. In this study we explored the relationship between landscape preference and three landscape indicators of naturalness (level of succession, number of woodland patches and shape index of edges). We used computer-generated visualisations of a hypothetical landscape containing pasture and broadleaved woodland. In the landscape simulations we altered the values of the naturalness indicators between the levels of low, medium and high, creating 27 different visualisations. The survey was distributed as an on-line survey in seven different languages and obtained 703 respondents. The study showed a strong relationship with preference for both the level of succession and number of woodland patches, and a weaker relationship with shape index of edges. The two demographic factors which were shown to contribute most to the formation of preference were gender and having a landscape related profession. The results suggest that the selected indicators are more important drivers of preference than demographic factors.

Capturing Landscape Visual Character Using Indicators: Touching Base with Landscape Aesthetic Theory

Abstract This paper presents one way that landscape visual character can be captured using indicators derived from nine theory-based concepts related to landscape perception. The paper aims to establish links between landscape aesthetic theory and visual indicators, thus exploring what landscape indicators are really indicating. The steps from abstract visual concepts to measurable visual indicators are described, and links are made to theories of landscape preferences and perception. The focus of the paper is on the application of indicators, including a presentation of the possible data sources of the presented indicators. The paper includes a discussion on the selection of appropriate landscape indicators through a suggested filtering process. The relationships between the concepts and the ability of visual indicators to capture changes in landscape character and other issues related to interpretation are discussed.

Visual aspects in urban woodland management

Abstract This paper presents a study of woodland management guidelines analysed for their inclusion of visual aspects. The aim of the study was to identify approaches towards the management of visual aspects in urban woodland. For the study, 24 management guidelines from Sweden and the UK were reviewed for scale, degree of operational detail, the visual concepts used, their emphasis and justification. The review revealed that there exists a diversity of approaches towards managing visual aspects regarding the selection and emphasis of visual concepts as well as the scale at which they are applied and degree of operationality. Some general differences between Sweden and the UK where identified. These differences in treatment of visual aspects were mainly related to the use of different scale levels, different levels of abstraction and the basis for justifying the importance of visual qualities in management. These differences are discussed in relation to the wider management context, including landowner structure, landscape history and forestry traditions. We conclude that studying urban woodland management in another context (e.g. geographical and historical) can provide new insights for visual management. We also believe that transferring management strategies across cultures will result in them being altered at the policy and operational levels by the change of context. We further suggest that the use of visual concept could provide one approach for better integration of visual qualities in urban woodland management.

Analysing Visual Landscape Complexity: Theory and Application

Abstract The experience of landscape has, through the development of the European Landscape Convention, been highlighted as an important aspect to be incorporated in the management and planning of future landscapes. Complexity is a concept that appears in the development of indicators for several landscape functions, including visual quality and biodiversity. In environmental psychology, complexity has been used as an explanatory factor for landscape preference. This paper outlines the factors which constitute the dimensions of complexity perception and how these relate to coherence—a factor which seems to interact with complexity as regards to landscape experience. The paper further explores how indicators of landscape complexity developed within the framework of landscape ecology may be applied and used to capture relevant information on visually experienced landscape complexity. Particular attention is paid to the dimensional transitions which must be considered in order for map based indicators and perceived environmental qualities to be readily related in an applied setting. The paper concludes with some suggested models for how to link landscape indicators with landscape preference in future research.

Landscape Metrics and Visual Topology in the Analysis of Landscape Preference

Recognition of the value of landscapes, environmentally, economically, and to quality of life—and, importantly, the embedding of these concepts in legislation such as the European Landscape Convention—has led to the need for an ‘objective’ assessment of these values and the potential impact of changes to them. But studies relating preference information to metric analysis of planimetric viewsheds have so far provided only limited explanation of preference. It has been suggested that this is due to the effect of perspective on the visual topology of the view generating different metrics in perspective from those on the flat map. The completion of the Pan European Study under the EU Framework 5 Visulands project provided a large sample of preference responses to a limited number of computer-generated simple landscape scenarios. As such this is an ideal opportunity to test the significance of perspective on metric correlation with preference. This paper considers the degree to which metrics are altered by a panoramic or viewshed analysis, and the significance of this for any correlation with the preference scores. The implications for the role of the respective media in planning are considered, including that of 3D visualisation as a means for eliciting opinion on landscape preference.

Analysing the relationship between indicators of landscape complexity and preference

With the adoption of the European Landscape Convention the importance of landscape character and amenity functions have gained increased political recognition across Europe. Landscape complexity has been proposed as an important concept for describing visual character, with a range of landscape metrics developed for describing visual complexity. We present the results of a survey relating specific landscape metrics of complexity with preference for landscape. The survey used visualisations of six scenarios of landscape composition which showed differences in the amount of land cover as well as the distribution between open land use and forest. Metrics of complexity were applied for both map representation and panoramic scenes of the landscape. The relationship between complexity and preference was tested and strong relationships were found for the Shannon diversity index, Shannon evenness index, and aggregation index when applied to both maps and perspective views. The only background factor demonstrating a relationship with preference was age, whilst gender, occupation (ie working with landscape issues or not), and membership of an organisation involved with landscape issues all showed weaker relationships with preference.

The Euler character: a new type of visual landscape metric?

Landscape-preference theories such as prospect-refuge theory and Kaplan and Kaplans landscape-preference matrix and theories of visual perception propose that the physical structure of the landscape has a direct psychological effect on people due to evolved sensitivity to particular defining characteristics. Efforts to identify consistent quantitative relationships between metrics of these characteristics and human preference have had some success. However, the field has also faced some criticisms due to low explanatory power in the results reducing confidence that relationships found can be applied to other contexts. In this paper we argue that dependence on generalised planar maps for the derivation of the metrics but on viewpoint-specific perspective photographs for the preference data is a potential cause of low explanatory power. How viewpoint change may affect scene characteristics needs to be better understood if representative viewpoints are to be chosen to allow results which are general to an area, in particular the difference between discreet (topological) changes and continuous changes. This paper presents the results of an experiment to test whether the topological complexity of a view, as measured by the Euler character of the horizon graph, has perceptual significance. We investigate if images with higher horizon-graph complexity were considered more interesting than those with lower graph complexity via a forced-choice Internet survey.