Application of new computer visualisation techniques to forest landscape design and woodland management

摘要

Foresters and woodland managers are now expected to predict and interpret the potential ecological and visual landscape consequences of their decisions to public audiences who have widely differing requirements and levels of technical awareness. Thisprocess now forms an essential element of stakeholder consultation scoping exercises in relation to conventional forestry proposals, and also of the town and country planning process where woodlands are being specified as part of integrated landscape design greenspace solutions for built development schemes. The last applies especially where participatory planning methodologies such as 'Planning for Real' are being employed at the local level. These stakeholder consultation processes are characterised by a need to present complex predictions and visual analyses in an engaging style, preferably with a capability to modify the models and visualisations 'there and then' in response to alternative scenarios proposed by an audience - "what would it look like if we did that instead". The application of computer-aided landscape design and ecosystem visualisation techniques offer a proactive approach to meeting these increasingly demanding requirements. This approach has already proven to be effective in similar contexts in North American forest landscape ecology and landscape design practice over the last decade or so. A considerable body of experience has now been accumulated in forested catchment-scale bioregional planning in the Pacific Northwest (British Columbia, Washington and Oregon).