Assessing Forest Scenic Beauty Impacts of Insects and Management

摘要

Natural disturbances such as fire, insects, diseases, and severe weather can affect the perceived scenic beauty of forest landscapes. The impacts of disturbances may be reduced through management actions, although it is difficult to determine an appropriate level of mitigation. A better understanding of how the beauty of forests is affected by disturbance would enable more effective and efficient management of them; hence this assessment of the scientific knowledge concerning the impacts of forest insects on scenic beauty. This assessment defines management implications, including the degree to which forest insect impacts on scenic beauty may be partially mitigated through prevention of outbreaks, control of outbreaks, or other indirect methods such as stand and slash treatment. The paper discusses relationships between scenic beauty perceptions and certain forest characteristics such as the presence and dominance of large trees, tree species composition, and stand age. Stand treatments such as burning, harvesting, treating slash, and regenerating harvested stands also affect scenic beauty. Stand treatment impacts on scenic beauty may be relatively large compared to the impacts caused by insects. A summary of scenic beauty estimation studies concerning forested landscapes is presented in tabular form as an appendix. This review is restricted to studies conducted on forests located in the U.S. about the perceptions of U.S. residents. Significant cultural differences may reduce the transferability of the studies results to forests in other countries.