1. INTRODUCTION
Remotely sensed imagery, in the form of satellite and aerial
photography, has become an indispensable tool in resource
management and in numerous areas of scientific research. A
study by McRoberts and Tomppo (2007) of national forest
inventories in Europe, reported that remotely sensed data not
only increased the speed, cost efficiency, precision, and
timeliness of forest inventories, but also contributed to the
development of maps of forest attributes with spatial
resolutions and accuracies not previously possible. Methods
have been developed for the mapping of large-scale forest
cover change (Fraser et al., 2005) and estimating the extent of
burned areas (Gitas et al., 2004). Likewise, new analytical
techniques have been developed for mapping of urbanization
and urban sprawl (Xian and Crane, 2005).