ferous forest, 
gories were 
25.000 topo- 
ur Landsat 
e discrepan- 
t over or 
somewhat sim- 
ere inclusion 
| would cause 
n Belgium 
on living in 
ted to a large 
s in the Dinant 
roximately 
d the Famenne, 
edmont formed 
y the loess 
ite: mean 
99:0. 
'astern part 
» central part, 
has been cut 
| very humid 
1e to the imper- 
soils are found. 
this central 
remaining 
gher lying 
tic nature of 
] by steep val- 
)hic oak-horn- 
xed copsewood 
conifers have 
yo small in 
symbolically. 
ir general 
much over the 
ositioning 
of course more 
atter may be 
- 1499 - 
tôtisidered as an important purpose of our work. On the soils of the 
central depression which are rather difficult to cultivate there is evi- 
dence of a shift towardscattle farming and some 80% of the non forested 
area is now under grassland. 
2. Data products 
The two scenes studied, both recorded by Landsat I, mav be specified as 
follows: 
Scene ID Origin Recording date 
17242-10071 NASA Corrected 22/3/1973 
1-213/25-cycle 78 TELESPAZIO Corrected 17/5/1976 
Of the March scene a multispectral colour composite (bands 4,5 and 7) was 
made by superposition of diazocopies (3). Its study by optical means was 
important for the choice of the test site representative of the Famenne 
natural region. 
The main study was performed on the computer compatible tapes (CCT). Due 
to some recording error the southern 20% of the test site was not accessi- 
ble on the May scene. 
Computations were performed on the IBM 370/158 of the Catholic University 
of Leuven by means of the ORSER software package (Pennsylvania State 
University) (1). For the transcription of the Telespazio tape format 
into ORSER format, the COPTRAN programme written by W.Mehl (J.R.C.Euratom) 
was used. The EXIO programme (Extended ratio mapping) a variant of the 
ORSER NMAPW programme, was arranged by H.Gulinck. 
3. Software description 
NMAPW This programme classifies radiation levels in each spectral band, 
assigns. symbols to each class, and produces maplike outprints 
where each symbol corresponding to a distinct pixel can be identi- 
fied by its scanline and elément number. This operation is essen- 
tial for the positioning of pixels on the map and on the terrain. 
STATS This programme starts from "training areas" delimitated on the 
NMAPW print and recognized as homogeneous as far as landuse is 
concerned. For each homogeneous polygon the programme calculates 
the vector of the mean, the vector of the standard deviation and 
the variance-covariance matrix, using the information contained 
in one or several spectral bands. Optionally it can compute 
correlation matrices, numerical data, frequency histograms for 
specified channels as well as eigenvalues and eigenvectors for 
the variance - covariance or correlation matrices. 
CANAL This is a supervised classification programme, based on canonical 
analysis. Inputs are the STATS results obtained on chosen traininc 
areas. and: more especially the mean vectors and variance-covariance