The Ukrainian National Forest Inventory uses approaches to the assessment of environmental indicators that are generally consistent with those of other European NFIs: a comprehensive list of indicators is used, and appropriate data collection and presentation methods are available. Among other things, this means that there are opportunities for harmonised comparison of results with other countries’ NFIs, and that the necessary conditions and opportunities are in place to present the environmental indicators of Ukraine’s NIs for European and international reporting.
The presented estimates of biodiversity indicators related to stand structure confirm that a long period of forestry management focused mainly on achieving high stand productivity eventually led to a significant spread of simple stands (single-tier, single-age, monocultures). In the context of climate change, such plantations are unstable and vulnerable to external influences. This requires expanding the practice of implementing methods of close-to-nature forestry in the forestry sector of Ukraine, aimed at forming plantations of a complex structure.
The sanitary condition of the plantations and trees does not appear to be threatening. According to WWF, the presence of 5-8% deadwood is a necessary natural condition for the development of plantations, while more than 85% of trees show no signs of weakening at all. Although these factors require further local analysis, in general, no conditions for crucial sanitary condition of forest stands have been identified. Natural competition, entomopest pests, and diseases dominate among the causes of tree mortality. Drying out of plantations is observed most often at the age of 50-80 years. Taken together, these factors may indicate an insufficient amount of maintenance (thinning).
The inclusion of indicators of the general condition (crown) of trees in the national inventory (defoliation and dechromation were assessed at the level I environmental monitoring sites until 2016) has not yet yielded results that can be taken as reliable estimates. In addition to insufficient field data, there is an objective need for expanded training of the NFI staff to assess these indicators. More generally, the challenge is to expand the role of the national forest inventory as a single platform for national forest monitoring within the national environmental monitoring system.
The study revealed the need for further comprehensive analysis of indicators that would allow analysing information from several reporting tables. For example, it would be logical to further analyse the relative volumes of deadwood accumulation in plantations compared to the total stock of stands. Accordingly, the spread of impacts on stands, undergrowth and overstory vegetation coverage, and deadwood volumes should be further analysed in conjunction with data on stand completeness.
Examples from different countries on assessments of ecological conditions and biodiversity based on NFI data show the possibilities of using the network of inventory plots for monitoring the state of Natura 2000 areas, assessing the naturalness of plantations, classifying forests by ecological conditions of growth, as well as assessing biodiversity at the level of inventory plots. For Ukraine, the development of the Emerald Network is among the priorities of nature conservation activities, and the network of NFI inventory plots can be considered as a network where reliable data are collected annually to monitor the state of the Emerald Network. The areas of virgin, quasi-virgin and natural forests identified in Ukraine may also be subject to appropriate monitoring in the course of NFI. The inclusion of the European forest types indicator in the NFI of Ukraine in combination with the forest inventory using remote sensing data will allow to refine the assessment of forest naturalness based on the distribution of certain tree species. Forest inventories using remote sensing data can be developed into special ecological maps, such as diversity index maps to describe differences in tree size. The available NFI data can also be the basis for further scientific research on biodiversity assessment (indicators) at the level of inventory plots (assessment of phytocoenosis complexity).