Descriptive Visual Inventories

Third Section in Litton's Article: Descriptive Approaches to Landscape Analysis

 

Descriptive Visual Inventories:

Sigurd F. Olson, a 20^th century ecologist and wilderness advocate, describes how “aesthetics of the landscape is a complex fabric of sight, sound, knowledge, time, and ethics” (pg. 79).  Litton explains that “landscape inventories, based on description, are rational documentations of observed landscape.  They are foundation for succeeding assessment and analytical interpretation” (pg. 80).  If these inventories are professionally developed, they can clearly identify baseline information and serve as objective representations that reveal the landscape’s condition at given point in time.  The objective representations “identify typical landform, vegetation, water, and land use elements that are characteristic for an area” (pg. 80).  Usually typical landforms are important, but several landscapes also have atypical elements, such as extraordinary examples fast moving water, or old groves of mature trees.  By visual inventorying both typical and atypical landforms, landscape architects can identify patterns and relationships between these four elements, and creates a straight forward way of describing the landscape in simple terms.  In addition to describing what the landscape looks like, it is also important to use a map to coordinate the locations inventoried.  Litton suggests that

Another way for the professional to maintain objectivity  is to consider that the integrity of the typical or ordinary landscape combined with the atypical or extraordinary landscape it is necessary  to maintain overall scenic quality (pg. 80).

This means that landscape architects must make protect the integrity of all scenic areas, not just those who exhibit the most magnificent atypical landforms.

Descriptive inventories fall into two categories: routed and areal. 

• Routed inventories use roads, trails, or other locators to orient the traveling observer, “limiting attention to the landscape within the visual corridor” (pg. 80).  Litton describes the visual corridor as a “bounded area visible to the observer”.

• Areal inventories vary in scale or extent and typically contain varied details that address broad planning issues or purposes.

Both types of inventories are useful because they divide landscape variations into visual units.  “Definitions of depend upon spatial characteristics of land forms and vegetation or upon presence of a visually consistent (or homogeneous) set of elements” (pg. 80).  The units represent topographical enclosures ‘Each with its own distinct visual character and degree of unity’ (Tetlow and Sheppard 1977)” (pg. 81). 

Descriptive Visual Inventories applied to Vistas:

National parks and other protected natural areas are usually a complex balance between typical and atypical landforms. A routed inventory was completed and each vista was located on a map of the Park and Newfound Gap Road.  The areal inventory revealed similar topography and vegetation between vistas of low elevation and those in higher elevations.  Even though several vistas revealed mountain peaks, mature forests, waterfalls, or valleys; each vista reveals these elements differently, allowing the observer to see the landscape in a unique way.