European Remote Sensing Forest/Non-forest Digital Map

As such, the European Forest/Non-forest Digital Map is reasonably up-to- date and based on a homogeneous data source. 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