Landscape definition

Throughout history the concept of landscape has been defined in different ways depending on the cultural, scientific and social context (^{Steenbergen and Reh, 2001}). The word landscape comes from the Latin "pagus" which refers to country, place of origin or membership. There are semantic, phonetic and conceptual approaches of the French words "pays" and "paysage"; Italian "paese" and "paesaggio"; English "land" and "landscape"; Catalan "pays" and "paisatge"; and German "land" and "landschaft" (^{Gastó-Coderch et al., 2010}) . While perceive derives from the Greek word aesthetics "aisthanesthai" or "aistheta" meaning to perceive material things (^{Cakci-Kaymaz, 2012}).

According to various sources of literature, it can identify four different epochs of conceptualizing the landscape. The firs was related with Greek philosophers who lived between the years 500 to 400 BC, where the main occupation was understanding, meaning and landscape perception (^{Coccia, 2009}). A second epoch was of the artists, between the XII and XVI centuries in Europe, which exalted the beauty of the landscape through pictorial and literary works (^{Aguilar-Bellamy, 2006}). The third epoch was dominated by geographers in the XIX century and strengthened by ecologists in Europe in 1960 (^{Aguilar-Bellamy, 2006}). At this time there were definitions of landscape as "a part of the earth's surface, that for their ... internal and external relations have a specific nature and is distinguished from others by its geographical and natural boundaries" ^{Troll (1968)} and "ecological units" or "dynamic heterogeneous territories" (^{Forman and Godron, 1986}). The main emphasis about landscape was of physiognomic character, such as the delimitation and comparison with different landscapes for their tangible attributes from biologically and geographically perspective.

The fourth epoch was noted from the 90's, influenced by environmental psychology. At this time arise definitions as "the combination between nature and culture" (^{Zonneveld, 1995}), where the hard (physical and biological) and soft (social or humanities) sciences combine to explain the landscape nature-society dichotomy from complex, holistic and dynamic thinking (Urquijo-Torres and Barrera-Bassols, 2009). A definition with great contemporary influence has been provided by the Council of Europe (^{EC, 2000}) "territory as perceived by people whose character is the result of the action and interaction of natural and human factors". Furthermore, ^{Jacobs (2011)} complements that saying, "Landscape embodies the memory of natural processes and human activity ... is an expression of who we are and value ... provides critical support for what we want and how we want to live".

According to the above, the landscape concept has evolved from an image or physical-space object to an entity or territory perceived by an observer or group of observers. Furthermore, it is considered that currently the conception, study, conservation and landscape development are built upon the public opinion of a particular social group to meet its demands. In order to abound on the understanding and valuation of landscape perception, this study briefly describes the cognitive process of this and some theoretical and methodological considerations involved on it.

The landscape perception process

^{Munar et al. (2008)}, note that, from the materialism perspective, the landscape that is not seen does not exist. Consciousness and thought of the landscape is a result of the physical world, being this just an abstraction of reality. Therefore, from this perspective, the landscape perception can be seen as a mental or cognitive process by which useful knowledge or experience is constructed, prompted and based on the natural and cultural environment.

According to ^{Punter (1982)}, the landscape perception is a process that consists of three consecutive cyclic steps: 1) experience; 2) cognition; and 3) evaluation or preference. The experience of landscape is individual because each person has its own characteristics, is dynamic because they vary by a new experience and is physiological because it is acquired through the senses, being the view the most important ^{Cakci-Kaymaz, 2012}). Cognition is individual and subjective, as the acquired knowledge is a representation or abstraction of reality, which is influenced by experiences, associations and memories of the individual (^{van den Berg and van Winsum-Westra, 2010}; ^{Cakci-Kaymaz, 2012}). For its part, the evaluation involves a comparison between two or more options (^{Nogué, 2010}) which can be real or ideal.

Although the experience and landscape cognition are acquired individually and subjectively, landscape evaluation can be done collectively, taking into account the cultural, social and economic aspects of a particular human group (^{Nogué, 2010}). It is for this reason that much of the research on landscape perception refers to individual differences (level of education, occupation, residence, etc.) that determine the preference of the landscape of a social group (^{García-Alvarado and Dunnett, 2009}). Nevertheless that perception may vary by individual, social group or time, there are theories and methods that have been valid until our decade. Some of them are discussed below.

Aesthetic landscape evaluation

The theme of the aesthetic landscape evaluation has been widely discussed in recent decades (^{Porteous, 1996}; ^{Cakci-Kaymaz, 2012}). Given this, different theories have been proposed about perception, among which: "Gestalt" or "form" (^{Koffka, 1935}; ^{Köler, 1938}; ^{Wertheimer, 1938}); psycho-biological approach (^{Berlyne, 1971}); "Affordances" or opportunities for action (^{Gibson, 1986}); information processing (^{Kaplan and Kaplan 1978}); and perspective-refuge (^{Appleton, 1975}). Of these theories have been derived numerous investigations for understanding perception and landscape planning. In this regard, ^{Cakci-Kaymaz (2012)} mentions that landscape evaluation be made from both objective and subjective perspective. The objective assumes that the aesthetic quality of the landscape is due to the physical characteristics of the environment, and the subjective awards it to the cultural and social characteristics of the observer.

Generally, there are two methods to evaluate landscape aesthetic: 1) direct evaluation that valuate the landscape as a whole; and 2) indirect evaluation that values each of the landscape elements that compose it separately (^{Muñoz-Pedreros, 2004}). These methods are used in two ways: in situ (on site) and ex situ (off-site). Conventionally in a perception evaluation, written questions and display (photography, maps, models, etc.) are used. However, photography has been an instrument of controversy, because there may be differences in framing, visual field, distance, among others, which can lead to bias in the results (^{Svobodova et al., 2014}). However, both written and visual questions have their own strengths and weaknesses (^{Zheng et al., 2011}). Currently, methods of aesthetic landscape evaluation more effective are those consider the combination of different types of methods and the integration of new tools such as geographic information systems, participatory methods and surveys by using the web.

The perception in landscape evaluation is of vital importance, because it infers that the same landscape can have different meanings, being a particular cognitive representation of reality for each individual. Landscape evaluation is conceived as a basic methodological tool in the planning process of a territory. The results of these evaluations can vary according to cultural, natural, social, time, context and the paradigm of the human group particularly involved (knowledge, preferences, needs, experiences and desires), so trends of preference and not generalizable results are obtained.