of the report by Dexter, Heislers and Sloan (1977). The fire damage 
was classified into three burn classes in which the foliage of the 
dominant vegetation was either not damaged (lightly burnt), scorched 
(moderately burnt) or consumed (severely burnt). Only small isolated 
areas were left unburnt and these could not be distinguished on the 
photos from the slightly burnt class. More detailed planimetric base maps 
of the general Mt Buffalo area at a scale of 1:50 000 were also made 
available by the Forests Commission. Other support material by way of the 
relevant 1:100 000 topographic map in the National Mapping series and a 
vegetation map of the Mt Buffalo National Park (Rowe 1970) also existed. 
The photointerpreted map of the fire area was to serve two purposes - 
to aid in the analysis and to provide a datum against which the results of 
Landsat analyses could be compared. 
analysis Proceedure 
Visual imagery 
First generation visual images in each of the four M.S.S. bands of the 
portion of the scene covering the fire area were prepared from the C.C.T. 
on an Optronics Photowrite by the Division of Mineral Physics, CSIRO. In 
addition to the image restoration process usually applied by this group 
(Green 1977), the image was enhanced by contrast stretching using a linear 
function to concentrate the available range of film densities on the 
forested area at the expense of the cleared country. This imagery has been 
examined only superficially at this stage. 
Computer Analysis 
The computer analysis system chosen for the study was the CSIRO-ORSER 
multispectral data processing system described by O'Callaghan and Turner 
(1977). This system is flexible in its capacity, general in approach 
and relatively easy to use. It is based on the ORSER system (McMurtry 
et al. 1974) developed by the Pennsylvania State University, Office for 
Remote Sensing of Earth Resources. Implemented progressively from early 
1977 on the CSIRO computing network centered in Canberra, the CSIRO-ORSER 
system has been interfaced with a generalised image handling system, DISIMP 
(O'Callaghan and Aujesky 1978) to facilitate the display of image data and 
maps. 
In order to minimise computing costs and permit concentration on the 
area of the fire and the nearby unburnt area, a subimage of the Landsat 
Scene was prepared. A standard colour composite image was used to locate 
the relevant portion of the C.C.T. The subimage included appreciable areas 
of unburnt vegetation types similar to those damaged by the fire so as to 
provide data on signatures of unburnt forest for comparison with signatures 
of the burnt types. This was also considered to: be important in examining 
the effects of misclassification. 
The digital image of the subset atea was preprocessed to remove the 
six line striping effect by histogram equalisation and missing lines of 
data were replaced by interpolation. The image was also corrected for 
earth rotation and a new digital image produced. Being in ignorance of the 
spectral characteristics of the burnt and unburnt types, recourse was made