Nationwide landscape assessment

Landscape aesthetics have become increasingly important in the discourse on renewable energies in recent years and are often decisive for the acceptance of new projects by the public. According to the Federal Nature Conservation Act (BNatSchG, § 1, para. 1), the protection of the diversity, character and beauty as well as the recreational value of nature and landscape is one of the central objectives of nature conservation and landscape management. To date, however, landscape aesthetic aspects are often not sufficiently taken into account in planning and approval procedures. Accordingly, it is necessary to strengthen and qualify these concerns in consideration processes, which can be particularly promoted by impulses and recommendations at federal level. Also due to the numerous projects involving several federal states, such as the expansion of the electricity grid, uniform criteria and methods for the assessment of landscape aesthetic qualities are indispensable throughout Germany. Against this background, the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation has commissioned several research projects in recent years, which, however, currently are not interconnected. The task now is to develop an in-depth and systematic comparison of these methodological approaches and to identify the differences and similarities of the various landscape assessment methods in a demonstrative overall presentation. The following projects will be examined in depth:

• Roth et al. (2020): Entwicklung eines Bewertungsmodells zum Landschaftsbild beim Stromnetzausbau.
• Riedl et al. (2018): Szenarien für den Ausbau der erneuerbaren Energien aus Naturschutzsicht.
• Schwarzer et al. (2018): Bedeutsame Landschaften in Deutschland. Gutachterliche Empfehlungen für eine Raumauswahl.
• Hermes et al. (2020): Erfassung und Bewertung kultureller Ökosystemleistungen in Deutschland.

Finally, recommendations for the respective procedures are to be developed, including their application to different types of projects, planning levels and technical issues

Methods

The first step is to work out the respective objectives and objects of consideration of the projects in a rough screening. For this purpose, for example, the basic assumptions and conceptual understandings within the evaluation procedures must be analysed, as these have a significant influence on methodology and application and, accordingly, only with a systematic characterisation and classification of the procedures can an appropriate assessment of the efficiency of the procedures be made later. In the detailed screening, the criteria, indicators, and assessment results used are then discussed in more detail. This is followed by a detailed comparison focussing on the applicability and usability of the developed method. In a further step, the practicability and efficiency of the methods should be compared with each other, ideally by a case study. The project comparisons are to be presented in a workshop with experts and with the project managers and project partners of the related projects funded by the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation, and the strengths and weaknesses of the various approaches are to be characterised and discussed in working groups. On this basis, recommendations for the application of the different landscape aesthetic assessment methods will be made.

(The German publication includes an English abstract.)