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With rapid population growth, increasing urbanization and intensive work life cannot meet people’s physical and psychological relaxation needs. For this reason, people started to turn to rural areas so as to regenerate both socially and psychologically. Increasing interest in rural areas, the existence of natural and cultural landscape values in these areas has become more significant. This brings out the necessity of protecting the landscape potentials of rural areas rich in visual characteristics and ensuring their sustainability. The visual quality of the landscape is seen as a resource that is worth preserving in today’s conditions and is key to the development of the right landscape planning strategies. This study was conducted in Şavşat district of Artvin in order to identify the visually resourceful rural landscape areas. In this context, the study area was divided into six different landscape types, and visual landscape quality analysis was carried out on the identified rural landscapes. In addition, the fractal dimension of the images and the relationship between fractal dimension and visual quality values were calculated to reveal an objective assessment. Results showed that the rural landscape types containing aquatic and forest vegetation and rural landscape types containing forest, subalpine, and alpine vegetation had the highest visual quality value. And, in particular, it has been determined that landscape types without vegetation are not visually preferred at all. It is thought that the results may be significant in providing various protection and development strategies for local stakeholders on natural-based tourism that can be developed in the region.
Cite this article as: Tırnakçı, A. (2025). Identifying visual quality of rural landscapes: The case of Şavşat/Artvin. Forestist, 75, 0092, doi: 10.5152/forestist.2024.24092.