Scenic Value of Countryside Landscapes to Local Residents: A Whatcom County, Washington Case Study

Abstract

The use of scenic easements as a tool to conserve agricultural landscapes in the United States is growing and becoming widespread. At the same time, studies of human preference for scenes and the visual characteristics of agriculture are few. Most often, the professional judgment of a planner or resource manager has been used to establish scenic quality in agricultural landscapes. This study analyzed local residents' preferences for indigenous scenic factors in Whatcom County, Washington, a major dairy landscape in the Pacific Northwest. The pilot study was a field trial for a method currently under development by the USDA Soil Conservation Service to assess scenic quality in a variety of agricultural landscapes. This method is based on a conceptual framework developed earlier by an interdisciplinary team at the University of Washington. There are many studies and assessments of countryside landscapes using professional judgment, but only a few using preference testing; this is one of the first attempts to carry preference testing into a field method applicable to a range of agricultural landscapes. The study involved calibrating professional judgment by using local preferences, mapping areas of scenic quality based on a locally derived formula, and subsequently testing the ranking of scenic areas through further preference testing. The results show that laypeople, in this case farmers, can select pertinent factors among the array of professionally derived scenic factors and can demystify these factors for practical applications in the landscape.