The implementation of the ongoing National Forest Inventory is hampered by Russian war, inaccessibility of occupied territories as well as limited state financing. Therefore, a remote sensing based forest inventory (RS-Inventory) was also introduced in 2023 as a comprehensive solution.
The RS-Inventory of all forests of Ukraine revealed a total forest area of 11.2 million ha, respectively 18,6 % of total area of Ukraine, out of which 1.7 million ha have been temporally occupied by Russia or affected during the war. Total growing stock amounts to 2.8 billion m3.
According to the outcomes of the RS-Inventory the average growing stock amounts to 251 m3/ha, thus forest area and growing stock are higher than expected from earlier studies. Two thirds of the forest area is dominated by deciduous tree species.
The total volume of carbon accumulated in Ukrainian forests, including roots, branches, leaves and trunks was assessed around 944 million t or 3.5 billion t CO2-equv. – which corresponds to about 10 times the volume of annual GHG emissions of Ukraine.
Increment of Ukrainian forests as well as any timber, used additionally e.g. for wooden constructions, contribute to a significant extent to carbon storage.
Further, forests play an important role as a resource for forestry and timber processing industry, e.g. in terms of employment, timber production, trade as well as tax contributions to the state budget.
Assuming an average price of timber at 30 EUR/m3 the total economic asset of all Ukrainian forests would equal to about 84 billion EUR.
Field data from more than 4100 sample plots have been used for inevitable calibration of information from Sentinel 2 satellite images. Forests defined as areas covered by woody vegetation with a predefined minimum canopy cover more then 50%, observed at 20×20 m pixel level, regardless of its legal status.
More detailed results of the RS-Inventory, e.g. for tree species groups, particular oblasts, ecozones etc. can be found on the website under nfi.lisproekt.gov.ua/en, where also information about the methodology used can be retrieved. Country-level data include statistical corrections and error estimates.
The RS-Inventory was implemented in the framework of the Sustainable Forestry Implementation Project (SFI), supported by the Federal Ministry for Food and Agriculture of Germany. It presents a joint venture of Ukrainian and German experts, who used international experiences. Namely it was inspired from the German National Forest Inventory “Bundeswaldinventur” and related satellite based tree species maps.
In case you have any suggestions or comments with regard to the RS-Inventory please kindly approach the Centre of National Forest Inventory (CNFI), being responsible as a part of Ukrdershlisproject.
The SFI-Project plans to follow up with an historical analysis of changes in forest cover and growing stock during recent ten years as well as using the outcomes of the RS-Inventory for modelling potential timber supply.