Aesthetic values of forest landscapes

Abstract: The need of integrating aesthetic aspects into forest management has beenstressed both in research and in practice. The current study aims at finding possibleexplanations for the public preferences on forest landscapes with special regard toyoung forests. The study consists of two parts. The first part is a literature review,which is dedicated to systematizing the existing information regarding the nature ofhuman perception of forest landscapes. The second part presents the results of thesurvey. Two different methods of surveying public preferences were used. Thepsychological method was used while surveying people in the field, and thepsychophysical method – for the indoor survey using photographs. The statisticaltreatment of the data was based on correlation analysis, and to some extent on principalcomponent analysis. The study resulted in a set of findings, and most of them arereliable on the chosen level of significance (p=0,05). The results showed that the imageof recreational forest differed to a great extent from the image of forest in general.Attractiveness of young forest, i.e. perceived aesthetic beauty, was mostly correlatedwith sense of easy access and safety. Thus, presence of deadwood, understory and highstand density were the most important factors towards negative attitude about the forest.Single tree characteristics (height, diameter) showed a small but significant positivecorrelation with aesthetic quality, which contradicts with previous studies, where thosevariables were the main predictors of the forest scenic beauty. Standing and totalvolumes had a very small negative relationship with scenic beauty. The results alsoindicated a correlation between aesthetic and ecological values within the group ofrespondents, who were not educated in forest ecology. This finding suggests about theinfluence of good-looking appearance of forest on the overall public attitude towardssustainability of forest management practices.