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

By old growth forests, we mean high conservation value forest sites that received such status in accordance with the Ukrainian legislation. Thus, for monitoring purposes, 1434 of such sites were identified, covering an area of 17646.9 hectares.

For monitoring of the identified sites, ForestCom uses composites of the best least-cloudy images from PlanetScope and RapidEye satellites, available for viewing in Planet Basemaps. Images in Planet Basemaps are distributed in the form of GeoTIFF file grids referred to as “base map tiles” or simply “tiles”. Each tile’s size is 4096x4096 pixels. For the designated monitoring area, 139 tiles were utilized, acquired throughout the month, with an average spatial resolution of 4.77 meters. This composite was pre-processed for visual analysis.

Fig. 1. Composite of Planet Basemaps satellite images for December 2023 over the monitoring area in 

Carpathians, Ukraine. Monitored sites are marked in yellow, while those obscured by clouds are marked in red.

Due to high cloud cover and snow cover in  December  in the Ukrainian Carpathians, only 102  sites covering the area of 970,9 hectares were analyzed, constituting 7,11% of those designated for monitoring. Based on the analysis, no changes in the forest cover were detected.

For the remaining areas of the studied territory, a visual analysis of the condition of the forest cover was carried out using satellite images of the Sentinel-1 radar. They are weather independent, able to penetrate clouds and have a resolution of 10 meters.

The used radar images are assembled into a composite and pre-processed in Google Earth Engine in order to eliminate "noise" and correction, which involves taking into account the parameters of the survey orbit, radiometric calibration, filtering and geometric correction. This is necessary in order for the radar image to become colored and more suitable for visual decoding. Its raw data is black and white.

Fig. 2. Areas of especially valuable forests (yellow color) on the Sentinel-1 synthetic radar image for December 2023

Based on the analysis, no changes in the forest cover were detected.

Since the monitoring was conducted through visual analysis, limited by the resolution of satellite images. Hence, selective low-intensity logging may not be identified using such a method. 

The monitoring was carried out within the project "Combating illegal logging in Ukraine" with the support of the International Programs of the US Forest Service.

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To study previous reports on satellite monitoring of old growth forests changes, please refer to:

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Monitoring report of old growth forests changes in the Ukrainian Carpathians for June-November 2023

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

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

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