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

In the first month of the new year, our expert Oleg Chaskovskyi conducted another monitoring of old growth forests* of the Ukrainian Carpathians.

Optical images from the Landsat-8 satellite, again due to cloudiness during the survey, were unsuitable for determining changes in forest cover. A fragment of the composite from these pictures is shown in the picture to the post, where the old growth forest areas are highlighted in red. The technology of obtaining radar images allows to avoid "noise" from clouds, so the composite of radar images received from the Sentinel-1 satellite was used for visual inspection of 1099 plots, with an area of 12120.1 hectares. Currently, monitoring coverage is 70.1% of the total number of accepted primeval forests. According to the results of the monitoring, the forest cover in the surveyed areas did not change, that is, no solid log cabins were found there.

It should be noted that the resolution of radar images does not allow detection of selective felling of insignificant intensity, but only the complete loss of forest cover.

*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

Let's take care of forests together! #ForestGuard #forestcom