Estimating visual properties of Rocky Mountain landscapes using GIS

View quality rating is an important component of land management that is still undergoing parameter definition and technical development. Methods enabling the efficient and accurate quantification of viewshed properties over large viewsheds using readily available data are particularly needed. This paper describes a procedure for measuring a suite of visual properties known to influence viewer preferences for hundreds of observation points in extensive Wyoming landscapes. Planimetric and panoramic simulations were used for quantifying appropriate viewshed parameters. These simulations were created in ArcInfo using USGS digital elevation data and satellite-derived landcover. The planimetric simulation was ideal for quantifying the dimensions of views (areal extent, depth, relief), but not adequate for quantifying the composition of views (landcover, diversity, and edge of landcover). Instead, a high correlation existed between panoramic estimates of landcover and equivalent images captured in the field (r2=0.97). The viewsheds examined in this study had large areal extents, large relief, extended depth, and naturalness, and may extend beyond the spatial scales for which view-quality concepts and preference relationships were developed.