SPECTRAL-ANALYSIS FOR ARTICULATING SCENIC COLOR CHANGES IN A CONIFEROUS LANDSCAPE

Scenic resources represent a significant economic gain with regard to regional recreation and tourism. Measuring their scope and spatial dis tribution, however, has proved challenging because scenic amenities re late to both the physical environment and the responses of people inte racting with those settings. The reported research addressed the docum entation of scenic resources, and presented an integrated approach tow ard (1) the acquisition and processing of color/change relationships f rom scanned ground-based photographs, and (2) the creation of computer simulations using the above photographs to illustrate the color shift s measured during image processing. A geographic information system (G IS), the Global Positioning System (GPS), and image processing technol ogies were applied to insure that the simulated environments displayed high levels of spatial and spectral accuracy. The derived techniques could ultimately provide managers with a cost-effective means to asses s scenic change, through the use of indexed color/change data that cou ld be documented, reproduced, and integrated with other quantitative d ata.