ABSTRACT
The time has come when the argument of the environmentalist might best be presented by separating facts from emotions in relation to the environment, and by providing him with a means of quantifying his arguments: using numbers to talk about the landscape. This chapter discusses groupings of factors that appear relevant to landscape esthetics. The first group involves the physical features of an area—the presence of mountains and valleys, width of valleys, height and type of mountains. The second group includes those features that have to do with the region’s biology, especially—in the case of river valleys such as Hell’s Canyon—the vegetation near the stream and on the mountainsides, and the biology within the water itself. The third group encompasses “human interest factors.” Human interest is affected by the general level of urbanization; it can make a piece of landscape more interesting or the opposite.
