Forest landscape visual quality evaluation using artificial intelligence techniques as a decision support system
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Forest landscape visual quality evaluation using artificial intelligence techniques as a decision support system Ali Jahani1
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Behzad Rayegani1
Ó Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Forest management should be directed towards multifunctional management and utilization of forest services (other than wood production) in order to achieve maximum utilization and minimum degradation. Artificial intelligence enables forest managers to plan for utilization of forest landscape aesthetic values. Visual quality evaluation is a stochastic problem in natural forest landscapes and it is influenced by forest characteristics. We aimed to landscape visual quality evaluation by expert/human-perception-based approach and application of artificial intelligence modeling techniques for the visual quality prediction of forest landscapes. Therefore, we recorded five landscape attributes in 100 forest landscapes. We developed the stochastic model to evaluate visual quality potential by artificial intelligence techniques. Comparing to multi-layer regression (R2 = 0.588) and multi-layer perceptron (R2 = 0.847), the radial basis function (RBF) (R2 = 0.887) model represents the highest value of R2 in the test data set. The water, shrubs, roads, rocky hills, and trees, in forest landscapes were introduced respectively as the most important attributes which influence the RBF model. The designed graphical user interface tool, as an environmental decision support system, evaluates landscape visual quality of forests, and it helps to solve stochastic problems such as visual quality value. Keywords Visual quality Forest landscape Artificial intelligence MLR MLP RBF
1 Introduction Forest and landscape managers are planning the utilization of the non-wood values in the landscape to maximize the efficiency of forest ecosystems (Franco et al. 2003). Tourists are typically getting interested in forested landscapes due to visual aesthetic quality and natural phenomena (Scarfo et al. 2013). Forest visitors consider the forest landscapes as a natural environment with natural visual features and less human intervention. Therefore forest managers must rely on the protection of public visual quality preferences to produce and maintain users desired conditions. In the temperate forests area, the most critical issue in managing the landscape visual quality focuses & Ali Jahani [email protected] Behzad Rayegani [email protected] 1
Faculty of Natural Environment and Biodiversity Department, College of Environment, Karaj, Iran
mainly on different forests natural phenomena. Temperate Hyrcanian forests, administered by the Forests and Rangelands Organization of Iran (FROI), provide visual aesthetic features with natural elements such as trees, shrubs, streams, rivers, rocky hills and so on. Therefore, forest managers and stakeholders consider visual quality evaluation and prediction as a high priority aim. Forest managers, therefore, request decision support system tools that can help to solve stochast
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