Public opinion on energy crops in the landscape: considerations for the expansion of renewable energy from biomass

Public attitudes were assessed towards two dedicated biomass crops – Miscanthus and Short Rotation Coppice (SRC), particularly regarding their visual impacts in the landscape. Results are based on responses to photographic and computer-generated images as the crops are still relatively scarce in the landscape. A questionnaire survey indicated little public concern about potential landscape aesthetics but more concern about attendant built infrastructure. Focus group meetings and interviews indicated support for biomass end uses that bring direct benefits to local communities. Questions arise as to how well the imagery used was able to portray the true nature of these tall, dense, perennial plants but based on the responses obtained and given the caveat that there was limited personal experience of the crops, it appears unlikely that wide-scale planting of biomass crops will give rise to substantial public concern in relation to their visual impact in the landscape

Landscape Assessment via Regression Analysis

This paper presents a methodology for assessing the visual quality of agricultural landscapes through direct and indirect techniques of landscape valuation. The first technique enables us to rank agricultural landscapes on the basis of a survey of public preferences. The latter weighs the contribution of the elements and attributes contained in the picture to its overall scenic beauty via regression analysis. The photos used in the survey included man-made elements, positive and negative, agricultural fields, mainly of cereals and olive trees, and a natural park. The results show that perceived visual quality increases, in decreasing order of importance, with the degree of wilderness of the landscape, the presence of well-preserved man-made elements, the percentage of plant cover, the amount of water, the presence of mountains and the colour contrast.landscape assessment, visual quality, landscape elements, landscape value, Land Economics/Use, H41, Q21, Q26,

Landscape History and Theory: from Subject Matter to Analytic Tool

This essay explores how landscape history can engage methodologically with the adjacent disciplines of art history and visual/cultural studies. Central to the methodological problem is the mapping of the beholder � spatially, temporally and phenomenologically. In this mapping process, landscape history is transformed from subject matter to analytical tool. As a result, landscape history no longer simply imports and applies ideas from other disciplines but develops its own methodologies to engage and influence them. Landscape history, like art history, thereby takes on a creative cultural presence. Through that process, landscape architecture and garden design regain the cultural power now carried by the arts and museum studies, and has an effect on the innovative capabilities of contemporary landscape design

Visibility graphs and landscape visibility analysis

Visibility analysis based on viewsheds is one of the most frequently used GIS analysis tools. In this paper we present an approach to visibility analysis based on the visibility graph. A visibility graph records the pattern of mutual visibility relations in a landscape, and provides a convenient way of storing and further analysing the results of multiple viewshed analyses for a particular landscape region. We describe how a visibility graph may be calculated for a landscape. We then give examples, which include the interactive exploration ofa landscape, and the calculation of new measures of a landscape?s visual properties based on graph metrics ? in particular, neighbourhood clustering coefficient and path length analysis. These analyses suggest that measures derived from the visibility graph may be of particular relevance to the growing interest in quantifying the perceptual characteristics of landscapes

Imagining a New Italy to Create Italians. Le Vie d’Italia from 1917 to 1935

This article is situated in the framework of the editorial products through which Touring reinvented tourism and travel in the early part of the 1900s. It concentrates on the magazine Le Vie d’Italia, proposing a rereading starting from the covers, which, up through 1935, exhibited a product, or rather, an Italian product brand each month in place of the traditional beauty of the landscape. These covers/manifestos suggest a new visual of the landscape and build the new view for Italians, relying on the rhetorical mechanism—amply tested historically—of figures of the landscape operating as a topic

The world of the landscape

In his article "The World of the Landscape" Bart Verschaffel analyzes the visual logic of the landscape genre in painting, as it was developed from the sixteenth century on. He argues that the structure of a minimal foreground, a middle ground cut off from the foreground, and a background that gives way to the distant, corresponds to a meditative attitude, proper to the nature of the image as such. The landscape is essentially a calm image. Second, Verschaffel puts forward that the middle ground in landscape images is not, as in history painting, a waiting room adjacent to the action in the foreground, but is rather oriented towards the horizon and beyond: a landscape always represents the world. In the romantic landscape tradition, moreover, the vagueness resting on the horizon comes to the fore and creates an "atmosphere" that touches a lonely soul and transforms an image of the world into an intimate encounter

Visual Landscape Research in Sustainable Urban and Landscape Planning. Special Issue

How can we comprehend the “face of the landscape” and its visual perception? Furthermore, how can we make this knowledge applicable to landscape planning, design, and management? This Special Issue focuses on visual landscape research, in particular addressing approaches and methods for visual landscape assessment and their applications. Topics range from landscape preferences assessment, visibility analysis and visual impact analysis, to design principles and strategies

Relationship between landscape visual atributes and spatial pattern indices: A test study in Mediterranean-climate landscapes

15 p.The analysis of the relationships between landscape visual quality and landscape structural properties is an active area of environmental perception research. The aim of this study was to determine the relationship between landscape spatial pattern and the rating of visual aesthetic quality. Eight landscape photographs were evaluated for 11 visual attributes by 98 respondents. The scores obtained for these 11 attributes were subjected to principal components analysis in order to summarize the qualities used by the respondents and thus determine their visual preferences. For each photograph, three window sizes were defined (with respect to a landcover map) to cover the different areas corresponding to the visual field (foreground, mid-ground and background). The landscape spatial structure for each window was analyzed using spatial metrics. The correlation between each dimension and the spatial pattern indices of the landscape were then calculated. Positive correlations were obtained between visual aesthetic quality and a number of landscape pattern indices. The results suggest that landscape heterogeneity might be an important factor in determining visual aesthetic qualityMinisterio de Ciencia y Tecnologí

Valuation of environmental impacts of the Rural Development Program - A hedonic model with application of GIS

The payments within the Rural Development Programme 2007- 2013 seek to improve the environment and contribute to rural development and economic growth. These policy measures may therefore have visual effects on the rural landscape. To achieve a measure of willingness to pay for these effects, a hedonic pricing approach is applied. The prices for staying at holdings in the “Staying on farms” registry are used to quantify the valuation of these visual effects. The results of this study indicate that there is a relationship between the price of rental objects and spatial variables constructed in GIS. Riparian strips and animals at the farm are positively valued. Cultivated land, grazing and meadow lands close to the settings are negatively valued. Hence, this study indicate that there is a positive willingness to pay for payments addressing user values in a diversified landscape and a negative willingness to pay for actions leading to a more monotonous landscape, such as payments to extensive grazing systems.Hedonic Valuation, Rural landscape, Rural Development Program, GIS, Agricultural and Food Policy, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Q150, Q180, Q510,

Landscape aesthetics: Assessing the general publics’ rural landscape preferences

working paperThe central aim of this study was to gain greater insights into the factors that affect individuals’ preferences for a variety of landscape settings. To achieve this aim, this paper derived dependent variables (based on a factor analysis of respondents mean ratings of 47 landscape images) representing 5 different landscape categories. These variables were then utilized in separate OLS regression models to examine the effect of personal characteristics, residential location and environmental value orientations on landscape preferences. First in terms of visual amenity the results suggest that the general public have the strongest preference for landscapes with water related features as its dominant attribute which was followed by cultural landscapes. Second the results also demonstrate how there is significant heterogeneity in landscape preferences as both personal characteristics and environmental value orientations were found to strongly influence preferences for all the landscape types examined. Moreover the effect of these variables often differed significantly across the various landscape groupings. In terms of land use policy, given the diversity of preferences a one size fits all approach will not meet the general publics’ needs and desires