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and spaciousness, and positively correlated to mystery
and texture (Ellsworth, 1982; Herzog, 1985). There is
substantial preference for natural channels and sinuous
banks, with randomly-located trees (House and Sangster,
1991; House and Fordham, 1997). Indeed, straight lines
and rigid rows of uniform elements do not seem nat-
ural. Along suburban waterways, Kenwick et al. (2009)
revealed a slightly higher preference for earthen and veg-
etated banks than for banks made of stone or concrete.
Likewise, according to Gregory and Davis (1993), the
assessment of water colour (perceived to be an indicator
of water quality) and the percentage of channelised bank
shown in the scene were the two best single predictors
of the riverscape aesthetics. The preference was therefore
'for riverscapes which have clean water, are relatively
deep and are being actively eroded' (p. 181). By contrast,
the scenes of urban reaches and channelised concrete
banks attracted the lowest attractiveness scores. These
findings raise the question as to whether the evaluation
of river landscape demonstrates that the public's greatest
preference is for the channels which have been the least
affected by men. In fact, there is definite inclination and
desire to maintain a certain degree of management, at
least in urban areas (Asakawa, 2004). The idealised river
would have naturally-worn paths following its course and
short mown grass rather than uncut long grass (House
and Sangster, 1991). Mosley (1989) found that a num-
ber of familiar, orderly and heavily modified river scenes
in parklands or pleasant residential areas received rat-
ings that were higher in scenic beauty than others in
wilderness settings.
which elements do not' (Coeterier, 1996, p. 31). Stranger
elements may corrupt a landscape. As shown by previous
authors, many factors interact to explain why a landscape
is appreciated or not. Point elements, such as distinctive
vegetation, specimen trees, snags, rocks, and mineral bars
may attract the observer's eye (Lee, 1979). This means
that superficial features can have less impact than small,
localised, and specific elements on the pictures, opening
another point of discussion dealing with the parameters
to be extracted from a photograph and the link existing
between their impact on perception and their extent on
the photograph. Different techniques exist to evaluate
what the eye is looking at on a picture to improve the
general understanding of such a question.
By providing quantitative information on the different
aspects of social perception, photo-questionnaires are a
powerful approach combining social and ecological data
in order to provide management scenarios, identifying for
example the most valuable ecological and social reaches
to be preserved. Research perspectives are still wide in
this domain with the increasing interest of virtual reality,
allowing to evaluate the perception of different kinds of
3D riverscapes but also considering odour and sound, as
well as the view, as a part of the perception evaluation.
Movement is also a parameter of interest in riverscape; so
that both video and photography are valuable techniques
for surveys.
For river management purposes and notably for river
restoration, the question of what landscape we want is
a critical question, for which perception surveys can be
a valuable tool to accompany the technical work that
is made in such operations. There is a strong discrep-
ancy between the perceptions of nature of various actors.
What natural landscape do people really want? Inhabi-
tants may perceive naturalness in a very different manner
from experts (Coeterier, 1996). 'The public appears to
want a degree of naturalness and visual diversity that
the river engineer - or at least some engineers - want to
discard in favour of a more ordered, more controlled
scene' (House and Fordham, 1997, p. 41). For the same
river, different principles apply to different kinds of river-
scape. Three views on nature can be distinguished (Swart
et al., 2001; Van der Windt et al., 2007): (a) wilderness
is essentially conceived as a self-regulating entity where
human activities are absent or rare and do not disturb
physical and biological processes; (b) arcardian nature
refers to cultural ecosystems where human influence
contributes to the harmony of landscapes and enhances
biological values; (c) functional nature is strongly anthro-
pocentric and adapted to human uses. An integrative
18.5 Conclusions and perspectives
Besides aerial imagery, ground photographs may also be
usefultoextractthestructuralelementsoflandscapes.
Assessment of perception is truly a challenging issue
for river managers when they are implementing actions,
notably when such actions are not well perceived by
the population. It is therefore interesting to discover
why, and adjust the program accordingly or develop
communication tools to explain the different options
to the population. It is also interesting to obtain infor-
mation about perception before the implementation of
actions, so that the development of predictive models
of riverscape perception can be used effectually for river
management purposes.
The general public has 'a more or less clear image of
which elements belongs to a certain type of landscape and
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