With the objective to share information about the “new Forest Inventory Estimation and Analysis framework nFIESTA“ and to explore its potentials for Ukrainian NFI developments, the SFI-Project organised 27.06.2024 an online meeting with about 30 NFI experts from various European countries and organisations. nFIESTA is a framework of methodological approaches and open-source software for the analysis of forest inventory data[1], developed at Czech Forest Management Institute (ÚHÚL).
First, Andriy Shamrai, Head of CNFI of Ukrderzhlisproject, gave an overview on the National Forest Inventory in Ukraine, where he pointed to significant challenges, mainly related to the ongoing war. In light of this Shamrai presented achievements of a remote-sensing based forest inventory (https://nfi.lisproekt.gov.ua/), which was applied to get reliable results on the extent and structure of forest resources at relatively low costs and in short time for the whole territory of Ukraine.
Olexander Shevchuk, Association wood processing enterprises of Ukraine (AWEU), expressed the interests of the wood processing industry in NFI outcomes from Ukraine and from other European countries. In this context, Heino Polley, SFI expert, and Friedrich Schmitz, Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food, pointed to long-term experiences with regard to the German NFI (Bundeswaldinventur) and also – based on this – regularly published timber supply outlook studies. These scenario calculations provide the basis for strategic forestry policy decisions making, for long-term capacity planning in the timber industry and also for reporting on greenhouse gas sequestration of forests. Volker Sasse, SFI project leader, offered a closer collaboration with AWEU in order to take the concrete needs of the wood processing industry into account.
Afterwards, Radim Adolt, from Czech Forest Management Institute (ÚHÚL), presented the “Forest Inventory Estimation and Analysis system – nFIESTA”. nFIESTA was developed as part of the EU DIABOLO project. It has the ability for cross border estimation of forest parameters using pooled NFI datasets[2]. ÚHÚL decided to continue the development beyond DIABOLO with the justification that nFIESTA can be used for Czech NFI as well. Cross country estimations (CH, FR, GER, CZ) were conducted and validated first time 2018 in a DIABOLO case study.[3]
During the discussion Michael Wolf, representative of EU Delegation to Ukraine, welcome the nFIESTA activities as a potential contribution to EU forest monitoring initiatives.
With regard to potential options for Ukraine further information exchange on nFIESTA and a testing run with Ukrainian NFI field data are foreseen during a planned mission of Andriy Shamrai to the Thünen Institute in Eberswalde, Germany.
[1] https://gitlab.com/nfiesta/nfiesta_pg/-/wikis/myuploads/d2.10_report/d2.10_report.pdf
[2] https://gitlab.com/nfiesta/nfiesta_pg/-/wikis/myuploads/description_of_the_system/tex/nfiesta_overview.pdf
[3] https://nil.uhul.cz/downloads/ostatni/2019_02_06_demonstration-study-report.pdf
Presentation Overview on NFI/RS-Inventory approaches in Ukraine – achievements and challenges
