Forest mapping 1990

Since 1846, the management of forests in Belgium has been based on data collected through 10-year forest plantations. The latter were carried out through direct consultation of forest owners through questionnaires. With a view to optimising the storage and processing of the data for the management of the forest matrix, Eurosense Technologies NV/Eurosense Technologies NV produced, during the period 1978-1992, on the basis of the interpretation of colour infrared ortho-photographs (flight scale 1: 5000), a digital forest grading was commissioned by the Bos and Groen Department, AMINAL, LIN, Ministry of the Flemish Community. By applying GIS principles, this Boskartering was transformed in 1994 by the Flemish Land Company into an integrated database containing both a geographical (the forest pygons with their respective georeference) and a descriptive (characteristics such as owner-class, tree species, municipality, wood vesteriy, etc.) component.