Virtual reality for cultural landscape visualization

Although land managers and policy-makers generally have a good experience of what result can be expected from their decisions, they are often faced with difficulty when trying to communicate the visual impact of a management option to stakeholders, particularly when the landscape exhibits a high cultural value. Three-dimensional visualization of the landscape is often used for communicating with the stakeholders. A challenge in participatory methods for integrated assessment and policy planning is to view future changes in land use, according to scenarios. A 3-D landscape visualization component, SLE (“Seamless Landscape Explorer”), has been developed, which is launched after a scenario simulation to allow for exploration of landscape changes. Pressures causing such changes are translated into changes in the spatial configuration of the landscape. The different types of land-use are visualized thanks to a library of detailed textures, and vegetation can be added. This has been applied to a study of four scenarios in the French Mediterranean region, which were set up as part of a participatory process for discussing the planning of the regional peri-urban and agricultural policy, in an area dominated by the typical culturally sensitive Mediterranean matorral, (“garrigue” shrubland) surrounding the Pic Saint-Loup mountain. Examples of visualization are shown and discussed here.