ABSTRACT
The integrated management of land use requires change in land cover to be managed with regard to its ecological, economic and landscape functionality. An inventory of resources that includes the contribution made by land cover to the visual landscape can be used in the monitoring of the implications of change in land cover on the visual landscape capital of an area. A method is presented for assessing the visual resources of the landscape, as applied to the western part of the prospective Cairngorm National Park in Scotland, including an illustration of the changes in diversity of view content and the change in and the area from which woodland is visible along a chosen route. The results show a reduction in the overall contribution of scattered, natural woodland to the visual landscape, and an increase in the visual contribution of plantation woodland. The limitations of the method are discussed, and where there is potential for providing a spatial context for expressing the results of landscape preference modelling.
