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Recurrent wildfires in Ukraine exert severe impacts on the environment, human health and security as well as damage to private and public assets. From 2007 to 2020, the frequency of large wildfires has increased and reached a level that has not occurred previously. The period during April-October 2020 was the worst in modern Ukrainian history for the occurrence of catastrophic fires, e.g. in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (67 000 ha), Zhytomyr oblast (43 000 ha), Lugansk oblast (35 000 ha) and Kharkiv oblast (8 000 ha). In Ukraine there is the additional problem of open burning, mainly burning agriculture residues, which covers two million hectares (ha) annually. State forestry enterprises who are responsible for the management of 71% of the Ukrainian forests (7.6 million ha)and agricultural holdings are also responsible for the management of 41.3 million ha of croplands. The remaining forest users manage forest areas of 3.1 million ha within reserves and national nature parks. This article presents a brief overview of the problem of forest fires as well as of fires in other landscapes in Ukraine, and includes a critical reviews of the current wildfire management system and a description of the main features of the national wildfire management strategy. It also highlights the results of a survey of numerous stakeholders conducted on landscape fires in Ukraine. Based on the review of global and regional experiences, as well as existing fire risks in Ukraine, recommendations were developed for implementing an integrated landscape level national fire management approach.

The russian military aggression and the related socio-economic and environmental consequences have significantly affected the climate and production of ecosystem services through damage to forests, ecosystems, landscape fires and emissions of gases into the atmosphere. The study aims to estimate carbon dioxide emissions due to landscape fires in Ukraine during the year 2022. The OroraTech wildfire monitoring technology was used to detect fires, while perimeters of burned areas were delineated with Sentinel 2 time series. The Copernicus Dynamic Land Cover map was used to extract burned land covers. Emissions were calculated based on the intensity of fires (dNBR) with the share of burned biomass in different types of land cover. Biomass models were selected considering the dominant tree species within a specific region and the species structure of the sown areas of croplands. The volume of biomass losses was estimated as a result of fires of different severities. It was estimated that during in 2022, landscape fires burned 749.5 thousand hectares thereof: croplands - 419.1 thousand hectares; other natural vegetation - 273.8 thousand hectares; conifer forests - 31.1 thousand hectares; other forests - 25.5 thousand hectares. The impact of the war on landscape fires is confirmed by the large proportion of fires in the 60-kilometre buffer zone along the frontline - 68.9% of the total area of fire. Among all fires, 42.5% of fires occurred in the occupied territory. Total CO2 emissions from all types of landscape fires reached 5.20 million tons and other greenhouse gases - 0.28 million tons. It is the first detailed mapping of landscape fires with an analysis of each polygon for the whole territory of Ukraine. The results provide important information for assessing the loss of ecosystem services and estimating carbon dioxide emissions as well as for confirming the impact of hostilities on landscape fires. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change continues to threaten forests and their ecosystem services while substantially altering natural disturbance regimes. Land cover changes and consequent management entail discrepancies in carbon sequestration provided by forest ecosystems and its accounting. Currently there is a lack of sufficient and harmonized data for Ukraine that can be used for the robust and spatially explicit assessment of forest provisioning and regulation of ecosystem services. In the frame of this research, we established an experimental polygon (area 45 km2) in Northern Ukraine aiming at estimating main forest carbon stocks and fluxes and determining the impact caused by natural disturbances and harvest for the study period of 2010–2015. Coupled field inventory and remote sensing data (RapidEye image for 2010 and SPOT 6 image for 2015) were used. Land cover classification and estimation of biomass and carbon pools were carried out using Random Forest and k-Nearest Neighbors (k-NN) method, respectively. Remote sensing data indicates a ca. 16% increase of carbon stock, while ground-based computations have shown only a ca. 1% increase. Net carbon fluxes for the study period are relatively even: 5.4 Gg C·year−1 and 5.6 Gg C C·year−1 for field and remote sensing data, respectively. Stand-replacing wildfires, as well as insect outbreaks and wind damage followed by salvage logging, and timber harvest have caused 21% of carbon emissions among all C sources within the experimental polygon during the study period. Hence, remote sensing data and non-parametric methods coupled with field data can serve as reliable tools for the precise estimation of forest carbon cycles on a regional spatial scale. However, featured land cover changes lead to unexpected biases in consistent assessment of forest biophysical parameters, while current management practices neglect natural forest dynamics and amplify negative impact of disturbances on ecosystem services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]