COMPARACIÓN ENTRE LOS MÉTODOS PARA LA VALORACIÓN DE LOS PAISAJES Y APTITUD PARA MODELIZAR LAS PREFERENCIAS DE LA POBLACIÓN

Abstract

Landscape assessment methods are divided as valuing landscape from its complete observation (direct methods), from its individual constitutive attributes valuation (indirect ones) or from a combination of both approaches (mixture ones). Either way, according to the European Landscape Convention, every method has to be able to faithfully represent landscape population preferences. Therefore, in the present work we have selected a set of 100 photographs, valued them using the most representative landscape assessment methods: Yeomans (1979), Otero et al. (2007), Cañas y Ruiz (2001), Bureau of Land Management (BLM, 1989a; BLM, 1989b; BLM, 1989), Smardon et al (1979), Arriaza (2004) and Muñoz-Pedreros (2004); and compared results with population preferences for the referred photographs. Results show that indirect methods usually provide results closer to population preferences and that methods which explicitly consider anthropogenic elements often identify the elements that respondents point out as landscape negative influencing elements (such as transport infrastructure or buildings). Thus, results also allow identifying the optimum method, according to every landscape or anthropogenic elements characteristics, to consider in landscape valuation processes in order to include it in engineering project management.