Monitoring report of old growth forests changes in the Ukrainian Carpathians for June 2022

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Data: 15.07.22
Monitoring report of old growth forests changes in the Ukrainian Carpathians for June 2022

In June, our experts continued monitoring old growth forests based on Sentinel satellite images. In June, it was possible to select 18 images of the with a cloudiness of less than 20%. Therefore, the following Sentinel-2 images were used to calculate the vegetation index. (Fig. 1).


 

Fig. 1. Composition of Sentinel-2 images for June 2022

To analyze changes in forest cover for the territory of particularly valuable areas of the Ukrainian Carpathians, we calculated a raster layer for the NDVI vegetation index (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2. A layer of the calculated vegetation index for the research area.



A total of 18 Sentinel-2 images were used to calculate the normalized vegetation index NDVI (Fig. 2). For this, was created a JavaScript program. The computed image was exported to QGIS to calculate statistics for each plot. The NDVI index layer calculated in Google Engine Earth is exported as an image for further analysis in the QGIS environment (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3 Fragment of the NDVI index image with combined areas of old growth forests.



For each area of old growth forests we determined the value of the index, which is repeated most often (majority). Areas with low index values up to 0.3 were not detected. 1,099 plots with an area of 12,120.1 ha have been identified for monitoring, which is 70.1% of the total number of accepted primeval forests. As a result of such an analysis, no changes were detected in the territory of old growth forests. 



*Old growth forests - in the meaning, as it is introduced in the Law of Ukraine that includes three categories: virgin, quasi virgin, and natural forests - https://zakon.rada.gov.ua/laws/show/2063-19/conv#Text



Previous reports on satellite monitoring of old growth forests:

Monitoring report of old growth forests changes in the Ukrainian Carpathians for May 2022
Monitoring report of old growth forests changes in the Ukrainian Carpathians for February-March 2022
Monitoring report of old growth forests changes in the Ukrainian Carpathians for January 2022