Namibia Tourism Landscape Analysis And Evaluation

Namibia offers various wonderful landscapes which are breathtaking, especially in a photographer’s eye. This study chose the Central-western plateau landscape area for the analyses. Four analyses were performed for this research.The first analysis performed and applied the Landscape Character Assessment (LCA) method to the Central-western plateau. Among methods of landscape analysis, LCA provides a more suitable understanding and evaluation of landscape as a resource, for purposes of enabling landscape enhancement, planning, conservation, restoration and, more generally, management (Shanwick,2002). For this reason, its application has been selected as the most appropriate tool towards the achievement of our research goal. This method aims at assessing landscape elements both natural and human-made, land uses, and vegetation types, as well as their interrelationships and, finally, the character of the landscape as a whole.The analytical capability of GIS allows analysts and developers to locate new tourist attraction spots. Animals such as lions, cheetahs, leopard and giraffe were chosen for the Game Park, and methods used in the GIS software were Clip polygon and Intersect analysis to determine a potential site for a new Game Park, in the second analysis. Different factors were assessed, analyzed and given ranking according to the proximity from the Game Park to establish a Lodge within the Game Park. Results show that a Game park and a Lodge could be established in the Central West of Namibia.The third is the Newkirk method, which is one of the many landscape evaluation methods. The basis of this method is to measure landscape diversity, incorporating both, topographic and landform features in a diversity index. The results obtained show high values of (0.1-0.2) in the northern part of the study area. The study concluded that this method is best used in combination with other landscape evaluation methods as discussed in detail in the research.The fourth analysis applied GIS software to identify panoramic viewpoints with great view sheds of a minimum visibility of 180°, as well as a maximum of 360°landscape visibility. Findings show the area of study does presents great panoramic view sheds of about 360°visibility.