[Aesthetics theory and method of landscape resource assessment]

With the destruction of natural environment by human beings, scenic resources are no longer inexhaustible in supply and use. Human beings begin to lay the scenic resources on the same important strategic status as other natural resources, while landscape resources assessment is the prerequisite of their sustainable exploitation and conservation. This paper illustrated the psychological mechanisms of aesthetic and its approaches, compared with the methodologies of traditional and modem landscape aesthetic research, discussed the characteristics of important aesthetic theories (Platonism, Kant paradigm, Empathizing theory, Gestalt paradigm, Marxism aesthetics theory, and Appleton theory) and the landscape assessment theories of 4 paradigms (expert, psychological, cognitive, and empirical) and 2 groups (landscape environment science and landscape architecture culture), and summarized the important practices and successful examples at home and abroad. It was demonstrated that the historical development of landscape assessment had the feature of a contest between expert- and perception-based approaches, with the expert approach dominated in landscape management, while the perception-based approach dominated in landscape research. Both of these approaches generallty accepted that landscape quality was derived from the interaction between the biophysical features of landscape and the percepultual (judgmental) processes of human viewer. In the future, landscape quality assessment will evolve toward a shaky marriage, both expert- and perceptual approaches will be applied in parallel and merged in the final landscape management decision-making process in some but unspecified way, landscape information and complex geo-temporal dynamics representation central to scenic ecosystem management will present major challenges to the traditional landscape aesthetic assessment, and modem science and technology will continue to help meet these challenges. The main trends of landscape resources aesthetic assessment in this century will be the amalgamation and incorporation of diverse paradigms, the cross-disciplinary intersection and quantitative assessment, the emphasis of environment information and landscape ecological value recognition, the universal application of modern science and technology and of the dynamic and intellectual approaches of landscape information, the reality of landscape simulation and its scene technology of human perception, and the more attention to history and landscape culture.