Treesearch

An implementation work program has been de-veloped by the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Management (MASS D.E.M.) for the Massachusetts Scenic and Recreational Rivers Act, and the North River has been chosen as the pilot project area. The question which has been posed by MASS D.E.M. is: "What will be the impacts of eleven alternative implementation policy scenarios on new development, and thus on the visual qualities of the North River?" Components of the scenarios include building performance standards, zoning changes, and conservation purchases. The Harvard Graduate School of...

We will present a method of combining computer mapping with manual overlays. An example of its use is the Willamette River Greenway Study produced for the State of Oregon Department of Transportation in 1974. This one year planning study included analysis of data relevant to a 286-mile river system. The product is a "wise use" plan which conserves the basic character of the land. The process offers a complete analysis and overview for sensitivity of land to human use. Visual qualities of the landscape as well as environmental and cultural resources were recorded and displayed in various...

On-site reactions of groups of viewers to six timber harvesting procedures were measured by direct and indirect measuring techniques. Using the direct technique, groups recorded their overall impressions of harvested tracts on five-point scales ranging from very favorable to very unfavorable. For the indirect technique, semantic differential procedures were used. Factor scores developed from the evaluative factor of the semantic differential reactions were highly correlated with overall impression scores for the harvested tracts. In addition to validating the direct reactions, semantic...

This paper is an overview of development of legal/policy factors affecting visual resource management. Review of major legal issues, court cases, laws and administrative decisionmaking reveals that the "action" regarding legal and aesthetic issues is currently in the public arena as managed by administrative agencies. Analysis of key court cases reveals that the courts always go back to the "context" at hand to make a decision, and that existing legislation mentioning and/or providing inclusion of aesthetic or visual resources in environmental planning and decisionmaking creates a "protecti...

The concept of Visual Absorption Capability (VAC) is widely used by Forest Service Landscape Architects. The use of computer generated graphics can aid in combining times an area is seen, distance from observer and land aspect relative viewer; to determine visual magnitude. Perspective Plot allows both fast and inexpensive graphic analysis of VAC allocations, for project use.

This study identified manipulated forest landscapes with a low understory shrub density as being esthetic-ally preferred over non-manipulated, dense understory landscapes. This landscape pattern was identified both qualitatively, by preference ratings of respondents, and quantitatively, by measuring the physical components of each landscape. Forest sites were selected to show physically and vegetatively similar landscapes differing only by the presence or absence of a vegetation manipulation treatment. Color slides of these landscapes rated by groups of respondents revealed a consistent...

The Visual Management Support System (VMSS) is an extension of an existing computer program called VIEWIT, which has been extensively used by the U. S. Forest Service. The capabilities of this program lie in the rapid manipulation of large amounts of data, specifically opera-ting as a tool to overlay or merge one set of data with another. VMSS was conceived to computerize map overlaying tasks of the Visual Management System. It is also useful for any project that requires interaction of one or more maps to result in an output map expressing evaluation or interpretation information. VMSS...

An important activity in any land-use planning process is prediction of the consequences of alternative management approaches. Alternative plans must be com-pared in terms of their respective costs (economic and environmental) and benefits (in market and non-market values) if rational choice among them is to be made. The purpose of this paper is to describe a model for quantitatively predicting the effects of alternative vegetation management programs on landscape scenic beauty. Scenic beauty is assessed in terms of quantitative indices based upon public aesthetic judgments. Predictor...

Over the past two decades, the concerns of conservation groups have shifted in and out of the field of landscape esthetics. As the 1960's began, they tended to pursue their interests under the mantle of recreationists. By the mid-1960's, natural beauty became the watch-word, particularly with the national encouragement of Lady Bird Johnson. By the late 1970's, the focus shifted to environmental quality, which in turn shaded into the notion of ecology.

The basic information collected for landscape planning studies may be given the form of a "s x m" matrix, where s is the number of landscape units and m the number of data gathered for each unit. The problem of finding the optimum location for a given project is translated in the problem of ranking the series of vectors in the matrix which represent landscape units. The paper describes a method to do this, solely on the basis of data gathered.