People’s satisfaction towards the experience in forests is one of most important feedbacks that forest park managers need to meet positive visitors’ experiences. Although the drawbacks of questionnaire methodology are obvious for data collection from self-reported scores at the landscape scale, few alternative methods have been proposed. In this study, nine urban forest parks along the urbanization gradients in three capital cities of Northeast China were targeted to investigate their visitors’ selfies from social networking services (SNS) by assessing facial expressions. A total of 935 photos with location records were obtained from the SNS platform of Sina Micro-Blog in a social hot-event of ‘Golden Week Holidays of National Day of China’ of 2017. Images were recognized by FireFace software to assess scores of neutral, happy, sad, angry, surprised, scared, disgusted, and contempt expressions. Data were ranked in descending order and analyzed by Friedman’s test, correlation analysis, and Poisson regression. Visitors in downtown-forests showed fewer negative expressions at the most northern city than at the southern most one. The negative expressions tended to be alleviated with the increasing distance of forest parks from downtown. However, when the distance reached over 10 km no geographical effect was found. Female visitors showed positive emotional expressions to urban forests while male visitors showed no response. In conclusion, using data from SNS, this study found an experience in forest park less than 10 km from the downtown of a northern city resulted in female visitors showing the most positive expressions.

Landscape color provides visual attractiveness and is an important landscape architecture construct in design and with aesthetics. Along roadways, plant color in a midground position provides a potential location readily seen by people. However, few studies have quantitatively explored the impact of a green (original) only compared to additions of color on the visual aesthetic quality (VAQ) in this spatial location. In this study, visual images were constructed to contrast four red color proportions (25%, 50%, 75% and 100% of midground) and four color spatial distributions (Red-Single, Red-Group, Green-Single and Green-Group) mixed with three landscapes texture classes (rigid = narrowleaf coniferous, soft = broadleaved, and mixed = both) in the background. As red color proportion increased, VAQ also increased. In the original all green landscape, the background setting had a significant impact on VAQ, but the texture plant design of the foreground had no significant impact on the landscape VAQ. Broadleaved (M_VAQ = 63.2) and coniferous landscapes (M_VAQ = 55.9) were rated as more attractive than a mixed landscape (M_VAQ = 27.9). From the perspective of design color, increasing the proportions of color can improve the VAQ of the landscape. This study indicates that aesthetic quality becomes highest when the color proportion of the middle ground layer was greatest at C₁₀₀ (M_VAQ = 79.7). Comparing the four spatial color distributions, the single distributed green landscape (M_VAQ = 60.9) and the group distributed landscape when started with red (M_VAQ = 54.0) had the higher quality than the others. Findings from this study can be used to support public authorities and urban planners to effectively design and manage urban spaces to meet dwellers’ needs.

Emerald ash borer, Agrilus planipennis (Fairmaire) (Coleoptera: Buprestidae), plays a significant role in the health and extent of management of native North Am