European Remote Sensing Forest/Non-forest Digital Map

Because the methodology used to produce the digital map is documented and was "economically" accomplished, the product is presumably replicable and could therefore be updated and/or used for monitoring purposes at scales of up to 1:2 million (ESA/ESTEC, 1992). The following steps are a summary of those actually used by the consortium in the production of the digital map: - Satellite data selection (minimal cloud cover)/acquisition; - Data pre-processing for a) geometric correction and b) cloud masking; - Data subset stratification into homogeneous spectral zones; - Data subset classification (Bayesian maximum likelihood); - Accuracy assessment (using classified Landsat MSS); - Mosaicking of classified data subsets; - Merging of final results and overlays; - Cartographic preparation