WOODY PLANT RICHNESS AND LANDSCAPE PREFERENCE BY

ii Biodiversity serves as a benchmark for healthy ecosystems. Sadly, many of our ecosystems are in danger because of a tremendous loss of biodiversity. Trees play an important role in preserving biodiversity in neighborhood landscapes. The problem is we do not know the extent to which people prefer a diversity of tree species in neighborhood landscapes. Landscape preference is a quick and essential assessment of how people imagine they would function in a landscape. This study explores how greenness levels and tree species richness affect preference for neighborhood landscapes. I conducted a systematic assessment of greenness and biodiversity and designed multiple virtual reality landscape simulations as alternatives to traditional photo and video methods of exploring landscape preference. The 18 landscape simulations I created were grouped into 2 levels of greenness (20-29 % and 40-49 % tree cover) and 3 levels of tree species richness (low, medium, and high). Each participant was randomly assigned to 9 scenes associated with one of the two greenness levels, and they rated their preferences for the different scenes on a written questionnaire. Results reinforce past research showing that people prefer greener landscapes. They also indicate that people do not prefer one level of tre