A Fuzzy Modelling Approach to Wild Land Mapping in Scotland

FRITZ, Steffen (pgsf@geog.leeds.ac.uk), SEE, Linda, and CARVER, Steve, University of Leeds, School of Geography, Leeds, LS2 9JT, U.K.

Key Words: wilderness mapping, fuzzy logic, multicriteria evaluation

The use of GIS for wilderness mapping is a recent development, but several attempts have already been made that cover a range of different areas across the globe (Lesslie, 1988, 1995; Henry and Husby, 1994; Kliskey and Kearsley 1993, 1994; Carver 1996). Methodologies range from the mechanistic and rigorous approach taken by the Australian Heritage Commission in 1988, where the mapping was based on a number of deterministic, yet arbitrary, parameters, to the approach of Kliskey and Kearsley (1993), who have taken into account the subjective nature of wilderness by using Stankey's wilderness purism scale (Stankey, 1973). There are, however, drawbacks to the way in which Kliskey and Kearsley (1993) have translated the perceived levels of wilderness to the spatial domain. Moreover, none of these methodologies are directly applicable to Scotland, where the term "wild land" is proposed as a better representation of the landscape (Aitken,1977) due to its long history of settlement and rural land use.

This paper describes an alternative approach to capturing qualitative perceptions of Scottish wild land using a fuzzy logic framework. Fuzzy logic is particularly well suited to wild land mapping because it is very difficult to determine a crisp boundary between wild and non-wild land with existing methods. Using fuzzy logic, wild land quality corresponds to the degree to which a certain point in the landscape belongs to a set of wild land quality membership functions with corresponding labels such as low, medium, and high. To generate these membership functions, an internet questionnaire has been designed for acquiring public perceptions of human impact within an otherwise wild landscape. These are then used in a fuzzy multicriteria evaluation (FMCE) for determining wild land quality in Scotland. Respondents are divided into different "purism" groups, and multiple perceptions of wild lands are mapped. It is shown that it is possible to quantify the wild land resource according to multiple perceptions of wilderness in addition to the more easily quantifiable natural resources such as ecology, land capability, and geology. For the purpose of establishing national parks in Scotland and for their potential zoning, this type of wild land area mapping will be a valuable and necessary technique. Moreover, the methodology is widely applicable and will be extended to other European countries in the future.

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