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Depth is an important part of our understanding and appreciation of landscape. Attempts made to measure attributes of photographs of landscapes and to develop predictive models of scenic beauty have either failed to include depth or included it by subjective separation of the foreground, mid-ground, and background within the photograph. The process of measurement from photographs is also limiting because it does not provide a mechanism for readily assessing the effect on visual qualities of proposed landscape changes. The process described here requires a detailed digital model of the environment but is then able to generate variables relating to land-cover type, their depth, and patterns of depth in any view direction. Among these variables are several which are closely correlated with scenic beauty and which can together make a good predictive model. Computer systems, which include hardware implementations of three-dimensional visible surface algorithms, offer the possibility of very fast generation of scenic beauty estimates from any location. Such estimates are among the requirements for autonomous agent-based modelling of landscape behaviour.

In this study, the authors develop a model of the formation of public acceptability judgments. The model suggests that in judging environmental management, people apply their values for the natural environment through psychological processes involving beliefs, aesthetic experience, and trust. A key aim of the study was to explore relationships among these processes. Through a mail survey, 487 Australians judged the acceptability of forest landscape management in Southern Tasmania. Structural equation modeling with these data provided general support for the model, confirming that all of the psychological processes are significant in the formation of acceptability judgments. The most important factor was found to be beliefs about consequences for the natural environment. A new finding to emerge from exploration of the model is that aesthetic experience is informed by values, particularly use/intrinsic values for nature, and in turn influences acceptability judgments mainly by influencing beliefs about consequences for the natural environment.