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A project which aims to help forestry institutions in Ukraine has been launched with the support of the CZDA
21.5.2024
In the wake of Russian aggression, Ukraine spent more than 37% of its GDP on defense last year. It is therefore logical that other sectors are exposed to existential problems and have almost no room for development and conceptual activities. The forestry sector is no exception. The sector is currently undergoing a significant transition while in conditions of war. Therefore, a two-year project entitled Strengthening Ukraine’s Forest Monitoring Capacity for Harmonization with EU Standards was launched in April this year.
The main objective of the project is to support high quality and comprehensive forest monitoring in Ukraine and thereby contribute to improving the provision of forestry data for, for example, summary reports assessing the implementation of the European Union or Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) strategies in line with the Strategy for the Promotion of Forests and Forestry in Ukraine. The project is implemented by The Forest Management Institute Brandýs nad Labem (FMI).
The project focuses both on the field collection of forestry data and on the acquisition of derived outputs from remote sensing data and their processing in Geographical Information System (GIS) tools. For the first area of support, the project is oriented towards the completion of the development of a standardized software tool for field data collection subsequently used for the production of forest management plans, called UKRTAX. Here, the Czech Republic builds on the support to forestry in Ukraine from 2004 to 2006 and then 2008 to 2011, when the first development projects were implemented in the area of transfer of advanced methodological and technological knowledge in the field of forest ecosystem inventory. The UKRTAX taxonomic tool will be developed tailored to Ukrainian requirements and standards.
“In addition, equipment will be supplied to build a central database of forest information into which data will be imported, not only from UKRTAX. The database will enable the evaluation of the data obtained and its accessibility for the forestry sector. The second key area of focus of the project will be to support the use of DPZ methods and process processing, in particular of COPERNICUS and LANDSAT satellite data. It is already a key tool for obtaining data on the forest sector in the EU and beyond,” says Marek Mlčoušek, project coordinator from the Institute for Forest Management Brandýs nad Labem.
The beneficiaries in Ukraine comprise of four institutions. They are the State Agency for Forest Resources of Ukraine, the Ukrainian State Forestry Project and Production Association (abbreviated name – “Ukrderzhlisprojekt”), the Ukrainian Research Institute of Forestry and Forest Melioration G. M. Vysotsky University of Environmental Sciences of Ukraine and the National University of Environmental Sciences of Ukraine. These partners will be directly involved in the project. Three specialized remote sensing/GIS units will be established at the main beneficiary of the Ukrderzhlisproject (equivalent to the UA FMI), which has so far been negatively affected by the temporary Russian occupation of the main administrative center in Irpin, which will be able to provide support to the National Forest Inventory (NFI) project based on the FAO’s Collect Earth software concept (linking the LAS and the NFI terrain), as well as the production of mapping outputs such as stand map, forest and forest land condition difference maps, etc.
At the same time, support will be provided to ensure the collection of field data through the supply of a range of field equipment and through the implementation of several educational stays and training sessions whose main objective will be to transfer the experience of Czech experts. “The information collected in the context of the project will be entered into a central database on forests under construction, from which it will be possible to obtain aggregated information for reports. In the form of an unlimited time multilicence (for about 100 users), the complete and elaborated UKRTAX taxing software will be delivered, covering the whole technological line of taxing. Thanks to the use of this technology, at least 80,000 ha of forest will be described by the end of 2025, and by 2028 we expect to describe at least 1.5 million ha of forest, including data storage in a functional central database on UA forests,” adds Marek Mlčoušek.
A specialized classroom for at least twenty five students will be set up at the university and three teaching modules will be developed on methodologies for using the FPA data and processing them in GIS for the forestry sector in Ukraine. Methodological procedures for deriving map outputs from DPZ data such as tree species classification, forest health trends, map of war damage to forests of Ukraine (area, stand loss) and others will be developed in collaboration with faculty experts. These outputs will be prepared for an area of at least 300,000 ha.
The State Agency for Forest Resources of Ukraine, which is the guarantor of the provided information on forest management at both national and international levels, will use the project outputs for the purpose of producing summary reports such as the “Annual Report of the State Forestry Agency for UA”, FAO/FRA report (Global Forest Resources Assessment 2028-2030) and inclusion of information on forest management of Ukraine in the Forest Information System for Europe (FISE), and possibly others. The implementation of the project, launched in April this year, is expected to last until March 2026. The total budget of the project is 18.6 million CZK from funds provided through the Czech Development Agency.