Integrating Aesthetics in Visual Impact Assessment and Quarry Reclamation Project

摘要

Obtaining the public acceptance in a rehabilitation project is still considered a challenge. This can be accomplished by reducing the visual adverse impacts and incorporate aesthetic aspects in quarry rehabilitation projects. In visual impact assessment study, the primary functions were to identify key viewpoints from which the quarry will be visible. Techniques for assessing landscape quality, sensibility or fragility, considered increasingly important in landscape planning process, were developed and put into practice; in this respect, numerical values were used to assign factors such as slope, vegetation, observation distance, visual magnitude and human activities. Computerized visual simulations were used to illustrate the effect of quarry's development in the landscape as well as alternative design treatments. Digital landform profiles were projected, and an ecologically and aesthetically balanced combination of fill-in selected. Aiming in aesthetic appeal and fast visual impact minimization the plantation plan included native and non-native species. The results of the present study helped, both to achieve an executable and balanced project, as well as a public aesthetically accepted design. Nonetheless, it might be interesting to assume a broader aesthetic theory, which integrates both, ecological and scenic, aesthetics. The present study hypothesized the need of incorporating aesthetic values in landscape rehabilitation, and puts in evidence that visual impact assessment of a landscape in an objective and scientific manner is not difficult.