Abstract: To facilitate the protection and development of traditional villages, scenic beauty estimation procedures (SBE) and semantic differential (SD) method were used to study the scenic beauty of traditional villages of Dong Minority in Southeast Guizhou. The results showed that a decreasing trend of SBE value was found in the overall landscape, farmland, vegetation, buildings, water body, and roads. Significant differences of SBE value were found among the overall landscape and buildings, water body and roads (P<0.05), but not among the overall landscape and farmland and vegetation. There was no significant difference among buildings, water body and roads or between farmland and vegetation. The main factors influencing the scenic beauty of the villages included environmental quality, stratification of landscapes, landform, architectural features (architectural texture, building quality, architectural appearance, architectural colors and architectural shape), water quality, morphological features of shorelines, area of the farmland, growth conditions of crops, spatial composition and morphological characteristics of plant communities, growth conditions and color of plants, road pavement, road curvature and psychological feelings that roads bring to people. The aesthetic features of the Dong Minority villages were mainly embodied by the beauty of ecological harmony, spatial form of cultural elements (buildings, roads, and water body), functional practicality and ethnic culture. Combined with landscape planning and protection techniques, the scenic beauty threshold method could be used as an auxiliary means to the quantitative study of traditional villages landscape protection planning. Based on such findings, we proposed that it is necessary to implement targeted protection by the principle of adopting protective measures according to classification for the protection of traditional village landscapes from the perspective of key influencing factors. Our results can be used to improve the traditional village landscape protection planning, optimize the villages’ spatial layout, and protect the ancient village style and idyllic landscape, thus would help maintain the landscape aesthetic value. Furthermore, our results provide reference for the quantitative study of aesthetic characteristics of traditional village landscapes, the protection and development of traditional villages, and the construction of modern village landscapes with Dong ethnic characteristics.

Key words: forest litter, dissolved organic carbon (DOC)., dissolved organic matter (DOM)