As indicated in the Study Brief for this Baseline Survey, changes in total area of each habitat type from 1989 to 1998 will be determined based on the mapping results obtained from the present study and the WWF's 1989 record. However, in comparing the SUSDEV 21 habitat map with the existing WWF map it is important to understand that the nature of the process by which each was created differs significantly. The WWF product is fundamentally an interpretative map created by experts from aerial photography. The map submitted with this report has been generated using a number of automatic techniques as described in the previous section, the most significant of which is the satellite imagery classification (see Section 4). This classification was supplemented with existing high quality vector information and some manually digitised information. It should also be noted that this is not simply a statistical approach as it required the knowledge of expert ecologists to:

• select training and validation sites for the image classification;

• identify where the classification is deficient and identify alternate sources of information;

• sensibly incorporate the additional information; and

• validate the map during field surveying.