Monitoring report of old growth forests changes in the Ukrainian Carpathians for March 2023

Category: News
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Data: 11.04.23
Monitoring report of old growth forests changes in the Ukrainian Carpathians for March 2023

     In March, Oleh Chaskovskyy - remote sensing expertHead of ForestCom “Forest Monitoring Lab” tested Landsat-8 and Sentinel-2 satellite images to spot illegal logging.

     During the study, available Landsat-8 optical images weren’t possible to apply as for March 2023 they covered only some of the studied territory. Also, due to snow cover in the Carpathians, the composite of such images was unsuitable for monitoring  (see Fig. 1).

Fig. 1. Areas of old-growth forests monitored by ForestCom in the Ukrainian Carpathians on the compositions of Landsat-8 satellite images in March 2023. Particularly valuable areas are marked in red


     In this case, specifics of Sentinel-2 images  were more suitable. Thus, a composite of 17 optical images was created and used further for monitoring (see Fig. 2).

Fig. 2. Composite of Sentinel-2 satellite images for March on the monitoring territory of particularly valuable areas


     To determine the forest cover changes on the territory of old-growth forests, a raster layer for the vegetation index NDVI was calculated in Google Engine Earth and exported as an image for further analysis in the QGIS environment (see Fig.3).

Fig. 3. A fragment of the vegetation index NDVI image with combined plots of old-growth forests monitored by ForestCom in the Ukrainian Carpathians in March 2023


     The total of 1,099 plots covered with an area of 12,120.1 hectares have been studied, which is 70.1% of officially recognized old growth forests.

     Each area of the studied forests that had low index values (up to 0.3) was visually inspected. As a result, identified reason for such a low index value was the areas of residual cloudiness and not tree cover loss.

     Based on the spatial resolution (10x10 m) of satellite images selective logging and other orest cover disturbances of low intensity cannot be determined with the help of such information. Based on the analysis, no violations of the forest cover were detected during the reported period.

     The monitoring was carried out within the project "Combating illegal logging in Ukraine" which is supported by the US Forest Service International Programs Office.


     Previous reports on satellite monitoring of old growth forests changes could be accessed here:

Monitoring report of old growth forests changes in the Ukrainian Carpathians for February 2023

Monitoring report old growth changes in the Ukrainian Carpathians for January 2023

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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