The first nearly complete land use/land cover map of the island of Sulawesi was prepared using the 1972 Landsat imagery. Seventeen Landsat frames were used in a multistage approach to compile what is believed to be the first map of its kind covering the two hundreds and two thousand sq.km. on the island. This paper reports the methods of visual analysis, data compilation and transfer, and ground truth sampling which were adopted for the mapping. Discrepancies between the Landsat images and the existing topographic maps are described.