Ground imagery and environmental perception: Using photo-questionnaires to evaluate river management strategies
Résumé
The use of photography as a medium for assessing riverscapes is well-established in environmental assessment surveys. This chapter highlights how photographs, as a surrogate for landscape experience, overcome several logistic and technical difficulties of on-site evaluations. A critical literature review indicates that several paradigms explore the assessment of public perception of river management or natural landscapes?. In addition, methodological options are clarified, such as the size of respondent and stimuli samples, the method for presenting scenes, and the consequences for data analysis. Some recent applications based on river and former channel scenes are presented with particular interest regarding the evaluation of gravel bars as well as in-channel wood and water characteristics (turbulence, colour, submerged aquatic vegetation). Results show variations in the cross-cultural perception of riverscapes that may induce conflicts in implementing sustainable solutions, such as introducing wood in rivers, preserving bedload transport, and creating or restoring floodplain lakes with specific landscape properties. Inter-group differences, contrasts between the attitudes of experts and laypeople, and the role of training and environmental education are discussed in a perspective of sustainable management, endeavouring to conciliate ecological, economic, leisure and spiritual interests.