restation 
phy 
dies 
; Will be 
rams being 
| be 
velop a 
ic processing 
ugar cane, 
reas no 
is being 
ar cane in 
le for about 
The importance of sugar cane is due not only to the sugar 
industry but also to the alcohol industry which gained relevance with the 
government's program of substitution of gasoline by alcohol. 
All automatic classification work is perfomed by maximum 
likelihood classification software running in the PDP 11/45 of the Image- 
100 system. The methodology employed is basically the same described by 
Bauer et al in BAUER 77 (i.e., the classification program is trained and 
tested with information obtained by infrared aerial photography). 
Soils Survey 
The soils survey of the whole national territory by conven 
tional methods would be a very difficult, if not impossible, task to 
undertake due to the magnitude of the area to be covered and the inacces 
sibility of certain regions. The alternative offered by remote sensing, 
mainly Landsat imagery, has been exploited and some promising results with 
manual interpretation have been obtained (VALER 77), in spite of difficulties 
inherent to the problem since interpretation parameters are usually indirect 
(i.e.,s0ils are classified analyzing the density and format of drainage 
patterns, vegetation types, relief, land use, etc.). 
  
Survey of Natural Forests and Reforestation 
This program aims at the development of methods to survey 
natural vegetation, mainly forests and reforested areas, by means of 
manual and/or automatic interpretation of Landsat imagery. Currently, 
reforestation in the State of Sao Paulo is being mapped. 
Another work being developed in this program is the mapping 
of natural babaçu in an area of 120,000 km” in the states of Maranhao, 
Piaui and Goias. Babagu is a palm tree that produces a coconut of high 
economic value due to the oil that can be extracted from it (MIC 77). 
The Cerrado is another natural vegetation being mapped