Abstract:

Based on the topographical characteristics, we employed the viewshed analysis in GIS to analyze the viewshed of the sight points(accessible and inaccessible) and tourist roads in Houshi National Forest Park in Liaoning. The results shows that all kinds of accessible points are distributed appropriately in which the viewshed area from accessible points on the higher hillslope far away from the road is almost more than 100 hm², while the viewshed area from accessible sight points close to the road is 40～70 hm² The visibility of the inaccessible sight points is satisfactory, and the viewshed area of 75% of them is larger than 100 hm² The tourist roads spread reasonably. When going through the whole road, the tourists can overlook 41.71% of the entire forest park area, which equals roughly to the the mean viewshed area of (61.96±23.52) hm², with three obvious fluctuations. Meanwhile, there is a relative big relief in each viewshed area from the road points, so that the tourists can experience the changing views when they walk along the road. This study focuses on the viewshed area characteristics from sight points and tourist roads, and provides a quantitative method to design the sight points and roads. It is also with a complement to current landscape visual assessment for planning and managing forest parks or other tourism areas.

Key words: forest park, DEM, viewshed analysis, geographic information system, tourism point, tourism road