Treesearch

Visual assessments are usually conceived of and applied to large‐area landscapes such as national forests. Yet the visual resource is an important cultural ecosystem service at all scales of landscape, from small sites to regional and national scales. In urban landscapes, visual resource stewardship has been framed in ways that address parks, lawns, or yard artifacts, and has not specifically been linked to planning issues nor to a visible line of research. The neighborhood scale is particularly relevant to people's everyday perception and experience of cities, and the recent availability...

What should be the role of the public in assessing the visual impacts of proposed changes to landscapes? This question was the basis of a guided discussion session hosted by the authors at the 2017 Visual Resource Stewardship Conference. In this paper we summarize our arguments regarding the appropriate role of the public in visual impact assessments (VIAs) and outline key issues from the guided discussion that must be resolved in answering the question. One key issue is how the perceptions of untrained people compare with those of trained professionals who now conduct most VIAs. To help...

The 2008 Maine Wind Energy Act (WEA) established a protocol for assessing potential visual impacts of wind turbines on the Maine landscape (Maine Legislature 2003a). The WEA stipulates that vwind project visual impact assessments (VIAs) must consider several factors, including impacts on scenic resources of state or national significance (SRSNS); existing character of the surrounding area; viewer expectations; the extent, nature and duration of public uses of SRSNSs; and potential effect on continued use and enjoyment. The WEA also defined SRSNSs; set a fixed 8‐mile limit for viewshed...

The great energy transition will have an impact on our built environment and our visual landscape like no other technical shift since the invention of the automobile. Our cities and countrysides will look different in 2040 than they do today as distributed renewable energy infrastructures expand at a rapid pace. The common perception of these systems is of standard flat blue solar panels and three‐blade horizontal axis wind turbines, separated from the public by chain link fences. Many people do not see these as welcome additions to cherished cityscapes and rural viewsheds. Rather than...

A brief description of the progress on mechatronic multi-degree of freedom material testers developed at the US Naval Research Laboratory (US-NRL) is given to describe the enabling technology for acquiring data that encapsulate both the recoverable and the dissipative behaviors of various composite material systems under quasi-static multiaxial loading conditions. The notion of material equivalence is then explored from the perspective of the data-driven dissipative behavior of multiaxially tested composite laminates. Emphasis is given by considering the same ber within the same resins and...

Glycoside hydrolase family 30 subfamily 8 (GH30-8) β-1,4-endoxylanases are known for their appendage-dependent function requiring recognition of an α-1,2-linked glucuronic acid (GlcA) common to glucuronoxylans for hydrolysis. Structural studies have indicated that the GlcA moiety of glucuronoxylans is coordinated through six hydrogen bonds and a salt bridge. These GlcA-dependent endoxylanases do not have significant activity on xylans that do not bear GlcA substitutions such as unsubstituted linear xylooligosacchar-ides or cereal bran arabinoxylans. In the present study, we present the...

Studies of habitat selection and use by wildlife, especially large herbivores, are foundational for understanding their ecology and management, especially if predictors of use represent habitat requirements that can be related to demography or fitness. Many ungulate species serve societal needs as game animals or subsistence foods, and also can affect native vegetation and agricultural crops because of their large body size, diet choices, and widespread distributions. Understanding nutritional resources and habitat use of large herbivores like elk (Cervus canadensis) can benefit their...

Contains 27 papers, 5 abstracts, and 7 visual case studies from the Visual Resource Stewardship Conference: Landscape and Seascape Management in a Time of Change, held at Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Illinois, on November 7–9, 2017. The material covers topical themes related to Federal Agency programs and policies, theory and concepts, visual quality assessment, visual impact assessment and mitigation, and visual resource management tools and technology. The visual case studies emphasize visual presentation of material with supporting text descriptions. This document is being...

This paper presents a methodology for making decisions about highway safety barrier construction along the historic Blue Ridge Parkway. This methodology takes into account: The visual and historic character of the Parkway’s roadside landscape, The ability of a particular roadside location to visually absorb a new or modified safety feature, The degree to which the historic landscape would be affected by proposed projects. The process begins with a safety screening to determine if placement of a new or modified safety feature is needed. If so, a second step evaluates the proposed feature to...

This paper presents a case study of a National Park Service (NPS) management planning project for the Moses H. Cone National Historic District (NHD), located along the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina. The project combined NPS and US Forest Service landscape classification, visitor use and resource management planning processes; the case study also includes the author's ideas about how these can be integrated and applied on the ground. An integral part of the management planning process was coming to an agreed upon understanding of the park/NHD's resources and visitor experience...