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The development of a visual impact method- elegy is reviewed from first concepts (1973) to application.3/ The method can be used to train evaluators to use explicit criteria (vividness, intactness and unity) to assess change in a setting's visual quality as the result of construction of a nuclear facility, or any other visible alteration. Slides of "before" and "after" eye-level color photographs provide the basis for evaluating these criteria. The model converts these scores into a numerical index of visual impact.

The National Forest Landscape Management Program began, as a formal program, at a Servicewide meeting in St. Louis in 1969 in response to growing agency and public concern for the visual resource. It is now an accepted part of National Forest management and is supported by a large and growing foundation of handbooks, research papers, and audio/visual programs. This paper is an abbreviated presentation on how the Visual Management System (VMS) functions.

In British Columbia, visual analysis is in its formative stages and has only recently been accepted by Government as a resource component, notably within the Resource Analysis Branch, Ministry of Environment. Visual absorption capability (VAC), is an integral factor in visual resource assessment. VAC is examined by the author in the degree to which it relates to interdisciplinary biophysical assessments presently carried out by the Branch. Such assessments encompass the disciplines of soils, surficial geology, aquatics, vegetation, wildlife, outdoor recreation and climate. A conceptual...

Visual management systems operate from the premise that people have expectations for landscape views, and that people's positive expectations should be fulfilled. Both the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management visual management systems assume that people expect wildlands to look natural. People also like to see natural landscapes in rural Iowa. Research I conducted in 1977-78 showed that naturalness, land use compatibility, water presence, and relief predict 75 per-cent of the variance in visual value of Iowa landscape views. Naturalness alone predicts 50 percent of the variance in...

The first purpose of this study was to deter-mine the visual quality of New Jersey Pine Barrens forests according to residents of the area. The goal of the study was to determine how to manage Pine Barrens forests to obtain high visual quality within the framework of residents' preferences, available by the Federal Omnibus Parks Acts of 1978 and proposed New Jersey state legislation establishing a Pinelands Commission and planning region. A small number of long-time residents of Washington Township, Burlington County, in the heart of the Pine Barrens, were asked to map sites of high and...

The issue of landscape management and enhancement has been of deep concern to Vermonters for many decades. This concern, which has been institutionalized through specific policies, stems from the dual desire to maintain the unique attractiveness of rural Vermont and the need to preserve and enhance a landscape which is basic to a huge recreational and tourist industry. From a planning theory perspective, this has taken place over a period of years, through a discrete number of policy and managerial judgments and in a generally incremental fashion. Yet today, Vermont has created as comprehen...

Policy Capturing, a potential methodology for evaluating landscape preference, was described and tested. This methodology results in a mathematical model that theoretically represents the human decision-making process. Under experimental conditions, judges were asked to express their preferences for scenes of the Blue Ridge Parkway. An equation which "captures," or defines the policy of each judge was generated. Individual equations were then clustered and a composite policy calculated at each step until one overall policy was obtained. The R2’s for some individuals were generally large...

An on-site visual preference methodology involving a pre-and-post rating of bog landscape photographs is discussed. Photographs were rated for familiarity as well as preference. Preference was shown to be closely related to familiarity, assuming visitors had the opportunity to view the scenes during the on-site hiking engagement. Scenes rated high on preference were likely to be scenes that visitors rated most familiar. In addition, familiarity ratings indicated that visitors were quite cognizant of what scenes they had or had not seen during the on-site hike. A single on-site experience...

The assessment of visual quality inherently involves the measurement of perceptual response to landscape. The Q-Sort Method is a psychometric technique which produces reliable and valid interval measurements of people's perceptions of landscape visual quality as depicted in photographs. It is readily understood by participants across a wide range of age groups and cultural backgrounds, and it provides data which can be mapped within a region and/or statistically compared to various social and physical dimensions.

A computer-assisted method was used to locate and evaluate approximately 1,200 miles of alternative corridors within an 8,000 square mile study region. The method involved in-depth impact analyses for nine major location criteria or determinant models. Regional "experts" from the Rocky Mountain area participated with BPA in developing model structure. Software were used to process linear and topographic data and to "optimize" least impact routes. Impact maps and statistics were generated. Computer output was tempered with extensive field work to develop preferred transmission line locations...