Treesearch

Section 106 of the National Historic Places Act requires Federal agencies to consider the impacts, including visual impacts, of their undertakings on the ability of certain historic properties to convey their historic significance. Visual impacts of Federal agency undertakings must also be considered under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA) for their potential to affect historic properties, scenic resources present in the landscape, and the scenic experiences of people who view the landscape. This paper discusses important differences between visual impact analysis (VIA)...

This paper describes the development of a visual management tool that allows landscape architects and planners, government officials, and community members to view the visual characteristics of the landscape in three dimensional (3D) real time from their homes or offices. The tool uses Google Earth, a free and easy-to-learn software that could be used by citizens and public officials. The user can view various landscape overlays, including land cover, visual quality, and visual sensitivity, and assess the extent to which proposed development will fit the scenic characteristics of the...

The Georgia Scenic Byways program is a "grassroots effort … to identify, preserve, promote, and protect treasured corridors throughout the state" (Georgia Department of Transportation 2013, p. 32). To date, the Georgia Department of Transportation has designated 15 Scenic Byways. This paper presents a model "valued landscape detector," a smartphone application that uses social media and augmented reality mechanisms to engage interested citizens in evaluating the scenic value of highways (or stretches of highways). Citizen data collectors, guided by GIS via their smartphones, are invited to...

While there is increased need for cultural resource conservation and management in North America, there are few assessment approaches that provide robust integration of visual and cultural resources. Our research, focused on the Appalachian Landscape Conservation Cooperative region, used a model to integrate visual and cultural resources for prioritizing landscape-scale conservation. We investigated how "place" can be studied in relation to visual resources given what we know from existing cultural resource databases such as the National Register. The study measured visual quality and...

In 2013 the National Park Service launched a visual resources inventory method designed to capture visual experiences accurately and consistently across diverse landscapes. In the inventory process, each view is mapped and described from the viewers' perspective. Views are also evaluated to capture scenic quality and importance to the visitor experience. Because of the scale of many park landscapes and the dynamic nature of visual resource pressures, park staff must be able to conduct inventories in a modular way. Inventory data can be used in spatial analysis to show where views overlap,...

This paper uses a Pennsylvania case study to discuss opportunities for using crowdsourced and georeferenced photography to aid in visual resource conservation and planning. Studies have shown that clustering of georeferenced photos indicates interest in a point of view within the landscape or a particular visual or cultural resource. This clustering can also aid in prioritizing visual resource conservation efforts by indicating preference for certain locations over others. The present research began by examining where in Pennsylvania people were taking photos using Google Earth imagery...

Island ecosystems provide habitat for many endemic species that may be threatened by nonnative species introductions. We examined nonnative freshwater turtle occurrences and diets to examine potential predation effects on native species in Kawai Nui Marsh, Oahu, Hawaii. No freshwater turtles are native to the Hawaiian Archipelago. The Pond Slider (Trachemys scripta) and Chinese Softshell (Pelodiscus sinensis) were the only turtles found in the marsh after 767 trap days. Trachemys scripta stomachs (n = 50) contained mostly the nonnative plant Commelina diffusa and nonnative snails (Pomacea...

The development of relatively simple gas-sensing devices with sensor arrays capable of constructing molecular profiles of complex Volatile Organic Compound (VOC) metabolites from clinical samples, based on production of healthy or disease-specific digital signature patterns, may soon help to revolutionize diagnostic procedures in clinical practice. This mini-review summarizes the development of recent portable electronic-nose (e-nose) technologies as new diagnostic tools with the potential for accelerating clinical procedures to facilitate non-invasive early disease diagnoses, improving...

Diverse objections have been raised to the prevailing North American practice of performing aesthetic landscape assessments via expert descriptions of formalist pictorial qualities. This paper explores compelling reasons for this situation such as constraints imposed by legal definitions and due process, as well as pragmatic and political issues. Examples from the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and the European Union show how these constraints and issues need not limit the form and content of assessments. Formalist pictorial aesthetics are noted as a safe and fundamental basis for public...

Smardon (1983) and Gobster et al. (2007) proposed development of a theory of ecological aesthetics whereby individuals could learn to value landscapes such as wooded wetlands for their intrinsic ecological value versus more surface artistic and culturally ingrained aesthetic values (Smardon 1983). The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Project (2005) proposed the valuation of ecosystem services, defined as regulatory, provisional, ecosystem support and cultural services provided for us by nature, free of charge. The challenge here is: How can we use cultural ecosystem services derived from...