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The non-profit organization Scenic Virginia is dedicated to identifying and showcasing the state’s scenic landscapes. Recently, the state incorporated a “scenic” element into its new Conserve Virginia land conservation strategy. Consequently, there is a need for a standardized assessment tool that both citizens and professionals can use to identify and evaluate the scenic value of publicly accessible viewsheds in Virginia. This paper outlines the rationale behind developing a scientifically robust protocol, which is based on an extensive literature review and photographs from Scenic Virginia’s annual photo contest. The protocol serves as a scenic assessment tool designed to encourage local citizen participation in identifying significant scenic resources in Virginia. Local communities will utilize this new tool to help them identify and evaluate their scenic assets. The protocol was reviewed by a panel of experts, and its implementation is currently underway.

This session is intended to help provide an understanding of the value of scenery/viewsheds and to demonstrate how communities can identify their most treasured views. Visual landscape character is an essential component of the local sense of place and community belonging. Many of the community-generated descriptions of towns and rural areas along the New River often emphasize views and vistas as important aspects of their individual and shared experience of place. There are few programs or processes that gather, and record community-identified valued scenic views. Scenic Virginia's Treasured Views project is intended to develop local interest by supporting community-initiated efforts to identify, record, and celebrate the views community members feel most passionate about. The session will start with a brief history of visual/scenic resources in the US. Historically, visual impact assessments have been done on public lands or private properties in response to concerns about impact change by a proposed development. These assessments often do not address whether these views are locally valued or significant. Local planning processes require an authentic and robust community engagement process. Viewshed documentation before new development plans come forth can help community efforts to preserve their most treasured views, and potentially reduce or avoid long and expensive efforts to conserve highly valued views. This session will demonstrate Scenic Virginia's protocol for identifying and recognizing treasured views and will go through an evaluation exercise on how to apply the Scenic Virginia Viewshed Protocol for acceptance to a Viewshed Register.