This project is a partnership between WERK, Logan Simpson and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Newcastle Field Office. 

The BLM has a responsibility to manage the quality of the public lands’ visual environment and to reduce the visual impact of development activities, as well as to prepare an inventory of the public land visual values and to maintain that inventory on a continual basis.

The Visual Resource Management program involved the inventory of scenic values to create a baseline understanding of the existing condition, establishing management objectives for allowable levels of modification to the visual environment through the land use planning process, and evaluating proposed activities to determine whether they conform to the management objectives using the contrast rating system.

WERK travelled to Newcastle, Wyoming to perform the inventory and document the results. Through the Visual Resource Inventory Process, we measured the relative worth of a landscape’s intrinsic natural beauty, evaluated public concern for the maintenance of scenic quality, and delineated distance zones to indicate the relative visibility of the inventory area’s landscape from primary travel routes or observation points.