Assessing Public Concern for Landscape Quality: A Potential Model to IdentifyVisual Thresholds

摘要

Considerable public criticism and sometimes legal obstructions have been directedtoward landscape management in relation to the extraction of natural resources. Many managers do not understand public concerns for visually attractive resources. Managers need to know when landscape alternations, like clearcuts, attract public attention and become visually objectionable. A study assessed the opinions of groups of people, representing various organizations, using color slides to simulate views of managed and natural landscapes. Of 63 management actions, 43 were not detected by more than half of the people. Only 31 percent of the management actions were reported by 50 percent or more of the respondents, and large, near actions were not reported any more frequently than small ones. A model was prepared to identify visual thresholds were people might first detect an action without knowing what they were seeing, and finally receive enough information for them to identify the action.