ABSTRACT
Mining, logging, and dam building, all accompanied by road construction, are some of the more conspicuous kinds of resource use activities. They share some common characteristics: they usually occur in wildlands; they have become most obvious in the recent past; 1 they can be executed at a fast rate; they change the way the landscape looks; they are subject to considerable public criticism. 2 The arena within which these activities may occur is especially concentrated in the western states. Excluding Alaska, a line from the Texas Panhandle to the boundary between Montana and North Dakota shears off eleven western states, and almost half of their total area (760 million acres) is in federal ownership, most of it subject to developmental change. In these same states, nearly one-fifth of their whole area is under U.S. Forest Service administration. This is the particular scene for this paper on the landscape— the visual resources. The National Forest lands present an enormous range of landscape available for research; their administration offers a promising opportunity for control of the visual environment. Yet concentrating on these wildlands in no way restricts the implications for better visual control in other lands, whether private or public.
