| Questions of whether landscapes communicate symbolic meanings, and how these are interpreted by the public seem generally avoided in forest policy and management. This thesis presents information on these issues by focusing on the following objectives: design a landscape perception study inspired by Semiotics; investigate relations between forest physical patterns and the public's evaluation of landscape explicit quality; investigate variations in explicit quality and their relation to socio-demographic attributes; investigate how forests may be described in words and how such descriptions are related to the explicit quality of the visual landscape.;Participants from Spain and The United States were asked to evaluate the explicit quality of a set of forest scenes, that is the degree to which symbolic associations communicated by the visual setting brought understanding about its meaning. Direct-magnitude estimation techniques were applied. A second task required a written interpretation of the scene that was selected as most explicit. Presentation media included color slides (n = 22) and photographs (n = 5) corresponding to in-forest scenes of hardwood forests in New York State.;Application of K-means clustering to respondent evaluations yielded five different groups. The data showed that studied forest scenes have an explicit quality that can be grasped and evaluated similarly by several observers within each group. Age, educational level, and childhood place of residence significantly affected group composition.;Scene characteristics (number of tree trunks, basal area, downed wood) had significant but not identical effects on explicit quality evaluation among different groups. Quadratic polynomial regression models gave the best fit. Educated participants related explicit quality to visible tree trunks and presence of low wood on the ground; they described the most explicit scene in terms of vegetation and human action. Less educated, younger observers related explicit quality to dense foliage and less basal area; descriptions involved vegetation and formal categories. By showing relations between physical patterns, socio-demographic attributes, and explicit quality, it is concluded that managers should approach forest landscapes as a communicative event. They should explore differential meanings rather than concentrate on a unique, functionalist representation. |
