Gender and age differences for perceptual qualities of a forest landscape in relation to dramatic landscape change processes: Implications for connections to place.

In this chapter, we examine the effect of catastrophic landscape change on individual’s connections to their everyday landscape. The study investigates relationships between perceptual qualities of a forest landscape and connection to place, before and after a large forest fire in Sweden. The findings presented in this chapter are based on results from 656 questionnaire responses from individuals living near the fire area. Using measures of landscape perceptual quality (naturalness, coherence, complexity, stewardship, disturbance, and scale/openness. Accessibility, sound, safety, and overall experience), we reveal the relevance of age and gender on changes in these perceived qualities and relation to attachment to the landscape. We found that women considered the landscape less easy to access, less safe and more disturbed than men. While the elderly experienced less accessibility and openness than did young respondents. We conclude that this everyday landscape has become a non-familiar place for the residents, creating a loss of attachment and a sense of spatial anxiety. Yet this loss and anxiety are not consistent across the population.