Forest is a national asset. Robust knowledge on the extent and structure of forests are an essential prerequisite for forest policy making related to social, environmental and economic issues. European and international experiences show the efficiency of modern forest monitoring instruments on the base of sample plots as well remote sensing based technologies for this purpose.

A National Forest Inventory (NFI) based on sample plots grid analyses was elaborated and tested during 2008-2015 for two Oblasts: Sumi and Ivano-Frankivsk.

Since 2020 the required legislation, institutional organisation at Ukrderzhlisproject as well as state budget financing of a National Forest Inventory was setup, to be implemented in a 5 year cycle on about 22. 000 sample plots a regular net of 5*5 km.

Due to the war by Russia implementation of NFI was hampered, particularly inaccessibility of occupied forests and well as lowering of state financing of the field data gathering. Since that time about 4100 sample plots in forests have been analysed only.

In light of this situation a Remote Sensing based forest Inventory (RS-Inventory) was implemented in 2023, whereas the data of available sample plots have been used as for calibration of information from satellite images.