Bringing Climate Change Science to the Landscape Level: Canadian Experience in Using Landscape Visualisation Within Participatory Processes for Community Planning - Landscape Ecology for Sustainable Environment and Culture - page 116

Chapter 7
Bringing Climate Change Science
to the Landscape Level: Canadian
Experience in Using Landscape
Visualisation Within Participatory
Processes for Community Planning

Stephen R. J. Sheppard, Alison Shaw, David Flanders, Sarah Burch
and Olaf Schroth

Abstract This chapter addresses the role of visualisation tools within participa-
tory processes in bringing climate change science to the local level, in order to
increase people's awareness of climate change and contribute to decision-making
and policy change. The urgent need to mitigate and adapt to climate change is
becoming more widely understood in scientific and some policy circles, but public
awareness and policy change are lagging well behind. Emerging visualisation
theory suggests that landscape visualisations showing local landscapes in fairly
realistic perspective views may offer special advantages in bringing the projected

Adapted and updated from a paper (Sheppard et al. 2008 ) published in Proceedings of ''Digital
Design in Landscape Architecture 2008'', 9th International Conference on IT in Landscape
Architecture, May 29-31 2008, Anhalt University of Applied Sciences, Dessau/Bernburg,
Germany.

S. R. J. Sheppard ( )