Forest Scenic Beauty
The relative scenic beauty of forest scenes can be quantified. This quantification requires careful questioning of members of the public and theoretically based scaling of the public's responses. Furthermore, relative scenic beauty can be statistically related to the characteristics of forest scenes, allowing a quantitative assessment of the contribution to scenic beauty of trees, forbs, downed wood, and other site characteristics. The following publications--all done with Terry Daniel of the University of Arizona--document and illustrate the methods used to quantify scenic beauty and relate it to forest site characteristics.
Daniel, Terry C., Thomas C. Brown, David A. King, Merton T. Richards, and William P. Stewart. 1989. Perceived Scenic Beauty and contingent Valuation of Forest Campgrounds. Forest Science 35(1):76-90.
Brown, Thomas C. 1987. Production and Cost of Scenic Beauty: Examples for a Ponderosa Pine Forest. Forest Science 33(2):394-410.
Brown, Thomas C., and Terry C. Daniel. 1987. Context Effects in Perceived Environmental Quality Assessment: Scene Selection and Landscape Quality Ratings. Journal of Environmental Psychology 7:233-250.
Brown, Thomas C., and Terry C. Daniel. 1986. Predicting Scenic Beauty of Timber Stands. Forest Science 32(2):471-487.
Brown, Thomas C. and Terry C. Daniel. 1984. Modeling forest scenic beauty: Concepts and application to ponderosa pine. USDA Forest Service Research Paper RM-256, 35 p. Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station, Fort Collins, Colo.
This next one is not mine, but it's so important that I list it here anyway.
Daniel, Terry C., and Ron S. Boster. 1976. Measuring landscape esthetics: The scenic beauty estimation method. USDA Forest Service Research Paper RM-167, 66 p. Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station, Fort Collins, Colo.
River Scenic Beauty
We have also applied perceived scenic beauty methods to measure the relative scenic beauty of alternative levels of instream flow.
Brown, Thomas C., and Terry C. Daniel. 1991. Landscape Aesthetics of Riparian Environments: Relationship of Flow Quantity to Scenic Quality Along a Wild and Scenic River. Water Resources Research 27(8):1787-1795.
Hetherington, J., T. C. Daniel, and T. C. Brown. 1993. Is Motion More Important Than It Sounds?: The Medium of Presentation in Environment Perception Research. Journal of Environmental Psychology 13: 283-291.
Methodology
To obtain scenic beauty judgments of scenes we asked people to rate them. These two reports describe the methods for obtaining and analyzing ratings and provide a software program for doing the analysis..
Brown, Thomas C., and Terry C. Daniel. Scaling of ratings: concepts and methods. 1990. USDA Forest Service Research Paper RM-293, Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station, 24 pp.
Brown, Thomas C., Terry C. Daniel, Herbert W. Schroeder, and Glenn E Brink. 1990. Analysis of ratings: a guide to RMRATE. USDA Forest Service General Technical Report RM-195, Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station, 40 pp.