Effect of afforestation on the scenic value of rural landscape

Afforestation of set‐aside land will have significant impacts on Finland's rural landscape. In this study, the visual impacts of gradual afforestation were evaluated by private non‐industrial forest and agricultural landowners, potential recreationists, and professionals of land use management. The scenic beauty of 32 different rural landscapes were assessed from slides, which were produced from nine original pictures by image‐capture technology, with the open landscape becoming gradually afforested in three stages. Scenic beauty was evaluated using a pairwise comparison technique and by rating landscapes using a scale from 1 to 10. In general, the scenic beauty decreased with the increasing intensity of afforestation. An exception to this was moderate afforestation, which can have a positive effect on scenic beauty. The more attractive the original landscape was, the greater the effect of afforestation was found to be. The differences in the evaluations of landowners were not as distinct as those of the other groups, and their attitude towards afforestation was more positive than those of the other two groups. In addition, professionals of land‐use management had a clearer opinion about scenic beauty than the other groups.