GIS for landscape studies

[Guoqiang Shen]

> Is anybody on the list engaged in, or aware of, work involving the use of
> GIS for landscape evaluation? This could cover assessing the scenic
> attractiveness of landscape; classifying landscapes into different
> categories; measuring the scenic diversity of landscapes; studying people's
> perceptions and value-judgements of landscapes as whole entites, and in
> terms of the components of the landscape; etc. I am aware that GIS is much
> used in landscape ecological investigations where "landscape" is seen as
> a concrete entity with structures and active processes at work. What I am
> interested here is more oriented towards the subjective and aesthetic
> nuances of landscape.

I once worked on landscape evaluation a bit. However, my work was not
linked to GIS directly. I have a collection of papers on landscape perception,
evaluation, asesthetic value-judgements,etc. Most of the methodologies used in
these papers are mathematics related. Contact me if you need a list of these
papers.

And by the way, you may think to contact the landscape architecture
deaprtments in colleges or universities in the US. As fas as I know, most of
these departments have some faculty working or once worked on this topic. Also,
some journals like Environmental Planning and Management, Landscape and Urban
Planning, Environmental Planning B, Landscape Architecture, etc. published
around 1980s have papers on this topic (may not be GIS related).

> On a related theme, can anybody suggest good texts relating to the imagery
> and metaphors used in early landscape painting? These paintings were models
> of reality just as much as our present-day GIS databases are. I would like
> to know more about how decisions were made regarding what to include and
> not include in a landscape painting. I don't think it was always driven
> purely by aesthetics alone...was it?

One source for you to look at is the journals or books on fine art and
painting. Also you may have to consider culture of a particular time and
geographic location. For example, the landscape paintings in Asia (say
China) and Europe (say Netherlands) are quite different, past and present. And
even in Europe, the landscape paintings of past(say the 1800s or before) are
different from that of present.

Another source for you may be the landscape photograph collections. Also,
have you noticed that many commercial ADs (say on TV and magazines) use natural
landscape features to enhence their products' appealling? Analyzing what
landscape features most commecial ADs use may tell us something.

Regards
Shen Guoqiang
Department of City and Regional Planning
Ohio State University
gus...@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu