Author: Cath Levesque, FIT
Considering Visual Objectives at All Stages of Block Development
Did you ever hear that you need a good eye to be a forester? You’d be surprised at how things can be “overlooked” in the bush and how crucial attention to detail can be. Believe me, it’s a gift to be this creative. If you thought for one second that “creativity” didn’t fall into a forester’s job title, then keep reading and I’ll prove you wrong.
I have been doing Visual Impact Assessment (VIA) at Cabin for several years. Visual quality is a forest objective that must be managed as per the Forest Practices and Ranges Act (FRPA) and is sometimes overlooked at an early stage. It is, in my opinion, a very important objective because, when well done, can help reach social acceptability. The quality of forest landscapes is particularly important in an era where outdoor activities and forest tourism are very popular. Simply put, it’s a unique process where Foresters visually plan out a process by looking at a landscape.
Still have doubts?
Ok fair, but keep reading!
Forest Planning and Practices Regulation (FPPR) Section 1.1 defines the different categories of visually altered landscapes. All forest personnel should be familiar with those categories.
Visual objectives should be considered at an early stage to offer the best results and to save precious time in the field and the office. In my experience, giving the same importance to visual objectives to other forest constraints at the planning stage offers the best results as well as being more efficient. At the planning stage, considering the landscape level for visuals is key to making sure that future developments will also be consistent with visual objectives. It allows for a more perennial wood flow.
At the development stage, it is important that the field crew is involved in the achievement of the Established Visual Quality Objectives (EVQO) as they play an important part in achieving visual objectives. Having a pre-layout VIA and sharing it with the field crew is a good way to include and empower the entire team to best development practices. It gives everyone a chance to review and provide their two cents as well!
The field crew can be part of the achievement of visual objectives by incorporating the possible constraints in the layout (strategic Wildlife Tree Patch, identifying good leave trees, natural boundary shapes, etc.), by confirming the visually greened-up status of adjacent blocks, and by ground-truthing or confirming potential viewpoints. All these steps can save some precious time for the visual specialist in the office.
Now listen, you must have a good eye for these things. Sometimes, this doesn’t come naturally either – we are professionals in the field for a reason.
There are many ways to perform VIAs. At Cabin, once viewpoints are found or confirmed by a viewshed analysis in arc, we use the software Visual Nature Studio (VNS) to generate landscape simulations. Imagine a viewpoint as hiking to the top of a mountain – getting the perfect angle to see the dimension in said hike and voila! You got yourself a sick view. We then used Photoshop to create a composite render with a field photograph and the VNS simulation. These steps can be very tedious in order to have a realistic outcome. Once the composite render is created, we assess the Basic Visual Quality Condition (VQC) of the landform with the proposed alterations as well as a numerical assessment. If the Basic VQC is not within the EVQO range, amendments to the blocks might be necessary. Field crews need to get back in the field and all the VIA office steps need to be redone – quite the hassle really and something to avoid doing. That said, if you are diligent, and work on having that good eye then revision isn’t necessary.
“Get Good” – Anonymous.
There are a lot of potential limitations when producing a VIA; human mistakes and discrepancies are possible. This is why it would also be important that primary forest activities personnel are familiar with visual objectives. The recommendations to achieve visual objectives (retention, feathered boundaries, etc) need to be mentioned in the Site Plan and Logging Plan so the logging crew knows all the details to achieve the visual objectives and to stop operations if the objectives are not to be met.
Hopefully we were able to convince you of a few things while reading this;
- Creativity is a skill for foresters, believe it or not!
- Having a good eye is an asset.
- The foresters at Cabin Resource Management know quite a thing or two regarding VIA’s – and we can prove it based on our several years of experience!
Look, Think, and Act – Good luck out there!
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