Urban expansion leads to changes in the visual aesthetic quality and ecological degradation of the surrounding slope forest landscapes. Color is a crucial visual element to examine when viewing this large-scale slope forest landscape from a long distance. This is particularly true for the autumn color of slope forest, which is very attractive to the public. An exploration of the relationship between the change in color of a natural slope forest and its visual aesthetic quality enables the implementation of the configuration of superior aesthetic tree species. Therefore, it can provide aesthetic rules and a reference to configure local tree species to support their visual aesthetic quality, ecological sustainability and native biodiversity restoration in a local urban slope forest. However, such research is critically lacking. This study investigated the visual aesthetic quality of the color dynamics of a natural slope forest in Jiaozi Mountain, China in the autumn. We analyzed both the composition of tree species and the changes in color for each species of tree in nine forest sites that exhibited superior visual aesthetic quality. The results showed that the forests with superior visual aesthetic quality were more green, red, and yellow, had moderately higher saturation and value, more obvious color contrast, and diverse colors with primary and secondary contrast. Diverse and balanced color patches or a dominant color patch contrasted by many small patches with interspersed color components also highlighted the superior visual aesthetic quality of slope forest features. Different combinations of color features can result in high visual aesthetic quality. The 84 tree species in the superior visual aesthetic quality forests primarily displayed 10 types of color changes that varied as green, yellow, blue, red, withered yellow, withered red and gray.

No abstract

Forest colors are important elements for public enjoying the scenery. So increasing attention has been acquired on forest color cognition. However researches on relationship between forest colors and public response are still insufficient, which cannot provide sufficient theoretical basis for the regulation of forest landscape in color. Therefore, We seek to examine the relationship between forest color and visual behavior based on eye tracking technology, and further interpret the visual indicators through the value of scenic beauty. This study researched Jiaozi Mountain in China by selecting 29 sampling points, counting up 116 photographs in 4 seasons by a mountainous region. On this basis, Matlab was performed to quantitatively extract color elements, while ArcGIS and Fragstats were applied to extract the spatial index of color patches. A total of 10 indicators were obtained to explain the color characteristics of each forest image. Through both visual behavior experiment and landscape preference evaluation, the results showed that people tend to have different visual behaviors and preference cognition when observing forest colors of different seasonal types. Based on the study of forest landscape color in all seasons, the subjects tend to judge the image in comparison to other seasonal forest landscape color photos to identify it more easily. For a single-season forest colors, diversified color information and abundant visual attention are important factors influencing the correlation between visual behavior, landscape preference, and forest color characteristics. This study aims to further reveal people’s perceptions and psychological preference to forest colors, contribute to the establishment of a more quantitative and scientific scenery evaluation system, and provide a scientific basis for forest color planning and design.

No abstract

No abstract