Much landscape change - for example the construction of wind farms, or logging of native forests - has negative impacts on visual quality of surrounding areas, and this impact has become the focus of public protest. Many land management agencies therefore consider visual assessment of landscape change a vital tool for exploring public responses to alternative landscape futures. Most landscape assessment work to date has relied on public reactions to edited photographs showing static views of landscape change. More recently, researchers have used a combination of geographic information system (GIS) based visual analysis and public responses gathered from original or manipulated photographs to estimate visual impacts of change in a larger landscape (BISHOP & HULSE, 1994; GERMINO et al., 2001; MOLLER, 2006). Both of these approaches have been criticized for ignoring critical aspects of landscape experience (HULL & STEWART, 1992). Of particular concern is the dependence of both approaches on public evaluation of individual views. While people often pause to admire a single view, large landscapes cannot be experienced at a single point, at a single time. More usually, large landscapes are revealed gradually or sequentially over time as a person moves through the landscape. Indeed, much of our landscape experience comes while moving: cross-country skiing, cycling, hiking, driving, travelling by train or flying. More distance is covered driving than through any other mode of movement. In Victoria, Australia each vehicle averaged 14,500 km in 2010. Someone insulated from the landscape within a speeding capsule may not be as aware of his or her environment as the skier or the hiker (OKU & FUKAMACHI, 2006). Nevertheless this paper focuses on extended movement, such as travelled by car, in order to test some parametric approaches to landscape evaluation in this dynamic context.
展开▼
