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LANDSCAPES
Measuring landscape quality
Understanding landscape change How do you determine the quality of a landscape? One way is to assess landscape elements such as forests, settlements and bodies of water. The FOEN also teams up with the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) to gauge the views of the Swiss public as part of the Swiss Landscape Monitoring Programme (LABES), which records and monitors both the physical characteristics of the landscape and the way that people perceive it. Text: Peter Bader
Do you have a favourite landscape? Open spaces with fields and meadows, perhaps? Or would it have to include forests – somewhere to escape to? Do you like living near water? Maybe you prefer urban environments? Or is mountain scenery your top priority because it reminds you of the place where you grew up? Landscapes – which include building culture (Baukultur) and biodiversity – are important for quality of life and for connecting people to where they live. A high quality of life is inextricably linked to a high-quality landscape. The European Landscape Convention, adopted in 2000, states that the landscape is a “key element” of individual and social well-being.
Objective perception? Given the great importance of the landscape, monitoring and assessing changes to it is vital. However, this is a challenging task because landscape change is often gradual and can only be recorded if suitable indicators can be collected in the same way over an extended period. Describing the landscape based on its physical characteristics is comparatively easy. But a landscape can only be considered of high quality if it is also rated positively by the people who live in it, says Gilles Rudaz of the FOEN’s Landscape Policy Section. “Landscape quality is not defined solely according to the spatial mosaic of natural and cultural elements, but primarily by how we humans perceive and judge that mosaic.”
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Among other things, people tend to find landscapes beautiful if they have acquired special significance for them during their lives and through their socialisation. The perception of landscape is also shaped by individual needs and interests. This raises the question of whether there is such a thing as an objectively measurable perception of landscapes, which can form the basis for a generally applicable quality assessment. According to Marcel Hunziker, a specialist in social sciences in landscape research at WSL, the answer is: “Yes and no.” Perceived landscape quality is essentially a subjective judgement shaped by individual preferences and personal socialisation. However, this shaping, and hence the resulting landscape assessment, are not entirely arbitrary because “people with similar socialisation tend to think in a similar way and therefore make similar judgements”. This “intersubjective agreement” is greater than one might think, Hunziker says. In addition, certain landscape structures and features have widespread appeal for people around the world, such as the typical mix of open land and clusters of trees found in traditional Swiss countryside, as well as rivers and lakes.
Switzerland at the forefront It is a core task of the Confederation, cantons and communes to conserve and enhance landscape qualities in the face of a steadily growing population and the associated increase in development. Reliable information about the current state and
