**3.5.4 Space**

232 Agricultural Science

The resulting maps were examined by the project staff and compared to their own experiences of certain areas in the studied region. After critical studies of the resulting maps, other classification criteria were tested in a second attempt, and so on in further attempts until the final classification versions were established – those found in Table 2. At the end of

The effort to develop the classification model can be illustrated to some extent by looking at the work with the characteristic Serene. For Serene, we first used a minimum size criterion: Areas should have a minimum size of 20 hectares to be classified as Serene. The reason for this was that an area must be relatively large to be perceived as Serene. From the beginning, we also claimed that the average noise level should not exceed 40 dB(A)24 h, and that a 250 m buffer along roads and dwellings was required. Moreover, we required a buffer of 800 m

Later on, the area size criterion for Serene proved to be useless, as a single large forest often consists of several serene land use areas grouped together, each of which is smaller than 20 hectares. Therefore we rejected that size criterion. We also rejected the minimum distance criterion to roads and wind power generators. The noise criterion, however, was sharpened to 30 dB(A)24h. This is perhaps the reason for the relatively rare presence (Table 3) of Serene

Forests, thickets, bare rock, mires and wetlands, lakes and rivers – all larger than 15 ha, if not closer than 1 kilometre from villages and towns. If closer, there is no minimum size for the area, because children seem to sense the Wild characteristic even in very small areas.

Excluded are areas with a noise level over 40 dB(A), and areas with wind generators within

In our first attempts, we set the minimum size of areas to 30 ha and to 5 ha within 1 km from

Mixed forest, marshes and mires, beaches, dunes, sand plains and bear rock. Plus all registered "key biotopes", certain inventories of pasture land, biodiversity areas, bird

Many of the mixed forests are very small areas, down to 25 x 25 m integrated in the open agricultural landscape, and these are of great importance to biodiversity from an ecological as well as recreational point of view. At our first attempt we included a buffer zone of 100 m. The reason was that fringe zones between different biotopes are very species rich, and we wanted to capture that by including a buffer zone in the biotope area concerned. However, this resulted in areas that were far too large to make the classification useful. One hundred meters is an overestimate of specious rich fringe zones,

villages and towns. But that reduced the amount of Wild too drastically.

biotopes of regional interest, also Nature 2000 objects and national parks.

the paper, you can see the five maps of the final classification.

around large wind power generators and shooting ranges.

Also areas steeper than 10° are classified as Wild.

**3.5.1 Serene** 

near the residents.

**3.5.2 Wild** 

800 m.

**3.5.3 Lush** 

they are narrower than this.

Beaches, dunes, and sand plains, bare rock, sparsely vegetated areas, burnt areas, natural grassland, moors and heath land, all forests larger than 25 ha. Plus slopes more than 10 degrees (creating viewpoints), farmland pointed out in a preservation plan and coastal zone preservation in a national plan.

Excluded are areas with a noise level over 40 dB(A).

In our first attempt, we used minimum size criteria: Forest 100 ha; natural grassland 20 ha; heath 50 ha. This resulted in very few areas. One observation was that many open space areas are small, but together form large open spaces. Therefore the size criteria for grassland and heath were rejected in our classification. Moreover, forests of different categories are in reality rather small, but together form large forest areas, giving the impression of "entering another world". To address this, we reduced the size criterion for forest to 25 ha.

In our first attempt, we also used noise level criteria for roads 250 m from the residence, but rejected these as being too high in many cases. At first we also used 800 m minimum distance to wind power aggregates as a criterion for obstructing a feeling restfulness, but later rejected this as well.
