In the context of landscape changes, understanding how to measure the visual quality of cultural living landscapes is crucial for their monitoring, planning and policymaking. The Alto Douro Wine Region (ADWR) is classified since 2001 as an evolving and living cultural landscape by UNESCO that faces major challenges in preserving its visual quality. This study aims to develop an expert-based visual assessment to: (i) Understand which components and indicators most influence the Landscape Visual Quality (LVQ); (ii) Compare the LVQ of reference landscapes used in monitoring programs to unmonitored landscapes. Additionally, we test if landscapes with higher LVQ correspond to the experts’ preferred landscapes.The visual quality was assessed through a photo-based survey adapted from established frameworks and divided into three components: physical, aesthetic, and psychophysical. Six visual basins corresponding to a sample of landscapes representative of the heterogeneity of ADWR landscape character zones were evaluated: three visual basins subjected to monitoring since 2001, thus with less land use change and three unmonitored visual basins with higher change. Respondents were also asked to identify their preferred landscapes and fill in a sociodemographic survey.Results show reference landscapes obtained higher visual quality and the most significant indicators were imageability, colour diversity and land use mosaic. Regarding land-use change, landscapes with higher alteration coincide with lower visual quality. The LVQ scores have a good correlation with the experts’ preference scores (r=0.60). Familiarity with the landscape was the most significant sociodemographic factor predicting the results for both LVQ and preference.
In the context of landscape changes, understanding how to measure the visual quality of cultural living landscapes is crucial for their monitoring, planning and policymaking. The Alto Douro Wine Region (ADWR) is classified since 2001 as an evolving and living cultural landscape by UNESCO that faces major challenges in preserving its visual quality. This study aims to develop an expert-based visual assessment to: (i) Understand which components and indicators most influence the Landscape Visual Quality (LVQ); (ii) Compare the LVQ of reference landscapes used in monitoring programs to unmonitored landscapes. Additionally, we test if landscapes with higher LVQ correspond to the experts’ preferred landscapes.The visual quality was assessed through a photo-based survey adapted from established frameworks and divided into three components: physical, aesthetic, and psychophysical. Six visual basins corresponding to a sample of landscapes representative of the heterogeneity of ADWR landscape character zones were evaluated: three visual basins subjected to monitoring since 2001, thus with less land use change and three unmonitored visual basins with higher change. Respondents were also asked to identify their preferred landscapes and fill in a sociodemographic survey.Results show reference landscapes obtained higher visual quality and the most significant indicators were imageability, colour diversity and land use mosaic. Regarding land-use change, landscapes with higher alteration coincide with lower visual quality. The LVQ scores have a good correlation with the experts’ preference scores (r=0.60). Familiarity with the landscape was the most significant sociodemographic factor predicting the results for both LVQ and preference.