Developing a Quality Assessment Index System for Scenic Forest Management: A Case Study from Xishan Mountain, Suburban Beijing

Zhidu Zhang,Chengyang Xu,Lan Gong

doi:10.3390/f6010225

Abstract

The public’s demand for more and better forest landscapes is increasing as scenic forest tours flourish in China, especially in the capital, Beijing. How to improve the quality of scenic forests has become one of the greatest concerns of urban foresters. Although numerous studies have focused on scenic forest management, to date, no reports have been found on developing a quality assessment index system for scenic forest assessment. In this study, a simple and scientific index system was established using an analytical hierarchy process (AHP) to quantitatively assess scenic forest quality. The index system is composed of four scales: individual tree landscape quality, in-forest landscape quality, near-view forest landscape quality and far-view landscape quality. The in-forest landscape quality was determined by horizontal and vertical stand structures, species composition and under-canopy landscape traits. Near-view forest landscape quality was mainly determined by patch characteristics, seasonal change, visibility, color change of patches and stand age class. To test the validity of our quality assessment index system, scenic forests in Xishan were used as a case study. The results show that near-view forest landscape was the most important scale for the overall quality of the scenic forest, according to the priorities of the criterion layer, and the second most important scale was far-view forest landscape. Seasonal change, patch color contrast, patch distribution and patch shape accounted for 52.2% of the total of 13 indices in the near-view forest landscape. The integrated quality of scenic forests in Xishan was at an average level, and the in-forest landscape, near-view landscape and far-view landscape had below average quality.

Highlights

Scenic forests have high aesthetic values, especially the visual perception of beauty [1].Currently, scenic forests, as popular travel attractions, play an increasingly important role in the pursuit of leisure for Chinese people
Our indices were derived from the literature, especially the research carried out by Zhang (2010) [3], which aimed at finding the intrinsic relationship of scenic forest quality factors by principal components analysis (PCA), based on measurement data from a total of 130 plots and a very large number of landscape photographs of the low mountain areas of Beijing
To improve the understanding of visual perception from the point of view of the tourists, we constructed a quality assessment index system in multiple scales, which linked the physical structure of the scenic forests to their aesthetic quality

Summary

Introduction

Scenic forests have high aesthetic values, especially the visual perception of beauty [1].Currently, scenic forests, as popular travel attractions, play an increasingly important role in the pursuit of leisure for Chinese people. Scenic forests have high aesthetic values, especially the visual perception of beauty [1]. The highest number of daily visitors to Xiangshan Park, the most well-known scenic forest in Beijing, reached 138,000 on October 28, 2012, making this the best record since 1989 when the first “Red Leaf Festival” was launched [2]. The rush of tourism into scenic forests has triggered a series of ecological and social problems, it has stimulated a new demand from the public for more and better forest landscapes [3]. Most scenic forests, especially those in suburban areas in northern China, are derived from planted forests, which are comprised of few tree species, high stock density with mass self-pruning and low rates of natural generation due to poor light conditions [4]. In suburban Beijing, planted Pinus tabulaeformis Carr. and Platycladus orientalis (L.)

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