March 31, 2005
When it comes to landscape, looks matter, rural residents say
Adding homes to a rural countryside, harvesting timber or building condos on a lake shore affects how an area looks, and that has become so important that growth management, sustainable forestry and other development plans now include mandates concerning changes to the “visual landscape.”
Retaining the rural character of less-developed areas, among the requirements in Washington’s Growth Management Act, is an example of such a provision, said Gordon Bradley, professor of forest resources. He spoke recently on Who Shapes the Visual Landscape? And Does it Matter? as part of an annual lecture series sponsored by the UW College of Forest Resources and supported in part by the Rachel A. Woods Endowment.
To determine the meaning of rural character in the visual landscape, for example, land-use planners and rural residents viewed a variety of photos, selecting those that most closely matched their idea of rural character.
What emerged was that planners think of rural character as being about low density. Rural residents in contrast, talked about a place with a sense of community, of being able to see one’s neighbors and having working farms and forested areas around their homes. They also thought of rural character when shown photos of older homes with porches, picket fences and steel roofs in relatively high-density rural towns.
“Planners need a clear sense of what the public prefers and then must ensure programs are put in place that meet those preferences,” Bradley said.
Visual resources are important when, in this case, they contribute to the identity of a community, he said. It might also be important to manage places people go to restore themselves or land where citizens expect to see good stewardship, such as timberlands.
Managing the visual impact of harvesting and other forest operations is important to public and private land managers because it is one objective in the Sustainable Forestry Initiative of the American Forest and Paper Association, the national trade association of companies in the wood products industry.
Photos from a study area involving six different approaches to harvesting trees on a Department of Natural Resources forest near Olympia were used by researchers to gather reactions to the visual effects of timber harvesting.
All six approaches to harvesting trees were based on good forestry practices, Bradley said, but the appearance of some of the sites made the public feel some lands were well tended and cared for and others were less so.
The approaches ranged from a clear cut, where all the trees were removed and the site replanted with seedlings, to thinned areas, where approximately 20 percent of the trees were removed making more room for the remaining trees to mature.
During the past eight years, photos from the various sites have been shown to foresters, recreation enthusiasts, conservation groups, educators and other citizens.
When asked to rate the sites on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being least preferable, the sites with fewer trees were more acceptable to foresters than to the other groups. The clear cut, for instance, had a mean rating of a little over 3 from foresters compared to a mean rating of a little less than 2 from the general public. In interviews, the foresters explained that they recognized a managed forest when they looked at the photo, while the general public saw bareness, potential for erosion and reduced wildlife habitat. Non-foresters tended to rate the scenes low for aesthetic reasons, while foresters did not include aesthetics as a reason for their ratings, Bradley said.
The researchers explored another aspect of visual preferences by seeing if the general public’s preferences changed after being provided information about the effects of harvesting on wildlife and the physical environment, or of the economic return from the timber harvested.
For the most part, information did make a difference in people’s preferences. Where positive physical, biological and economic information was provided, it caused preference ratings to increase. Increases were more pronounced for sites where more trees were left behind. Ratings did not increase as much for the more intensively treated sites, such as clear cuts.
Visual preferences also might be affected in coming years as trees at the harvest sites regrow, the clear cut having been replanted and all the sites subject to natural regeneration.
“Preferences about the landscapes we like should make it into management plans,” Bradley says. His full talk, a part of he lecture series, “Sustaining Our Northwest World: From Fire to Flowers,” will be broadcast starting later this spring on UWTV, http://www.uwtv.org/.
Research by Bradley, his graduate students and colleagues is funded by the USDA Forest Service. See: http://www.cfr.washington.edu/People/Faculty/Bradley/index.html.
