Scenic beauty of forest stands and impact of management
The aim of this study was to find out what kind of forest is considered beautiful, and how forest management affects the scenic beauty. Differences between interest groups and the impact of season on scenic landscape were also examined. The research was a psycho-physical preference study, where the scenic quality of the landscape at the tree stand level was explained by descriptive variables of the forest, treatment and season. The study examined the landscape preferences of ordinary people rather than experts.
Photographs taken from the forest were used to evaluate scenic value in all sub-studies. The photographs represented typical tree species compositions, forest treatments and stages of stand development in Finnish commercial forests. The objects of the study were commercial forests, urban forests, and tourist areas. Local Finns and foreign tourists who arrived in Lapland evaluated the photographs.
The survey found that most people value large stems and relatively open forests. Reforestation always decreases the scenic value of the landscape. However, deterioration of scenic value after reforestation was short-lived if it is related to the entire rotation length. Natural regeneration is scenically clearly better than planting or seeding. The scenic value of the forest can also be increased by forest treatments, especially in dense untreated stands. Excessive stand density is particularly offending for Finnish. In other respects, the forest landscape preferences of Finns and foreign tourists seem to be very similar.
The mental images on the landscape effects of forest treatments were essentially very similar with the perceptions based on photographs - all the treatments, which evaluators thought to increase the beauty of the forests, increased it also on the basis of the image evaluation also in practice.
Predicting landscape value is not easy, because there are clear differences between different groups of people and, in particular, individuals in scenic valuations. For example, forest owners and forestry professionals feel the landscape effects of forest treatments more positive than other groups do. The study supports the view that the attitude towards forest management actions reflected in the perception of the landscape effects of treatments.
The study showed how unique and time bound the experience of the landscape is. The same stand of trees may be experienced in a very different way in summer and winter outfit. On average, commercial forests appear to be suitable for recreation and tourism clearly better in winter than in summer. The difference is particularly evident in reforestation areas.