On September 27, 2023, as part of a panel discussion at the international exhibition of the forestry, woodworking and furniture industry “Lisderevmash 2023” Viktor Melnychenko, General Director and Andriy Shamrai, Head of the Centre for National Forest Inventory (NFI) of the State Enterprise “Ukrderzhlisproekt”, together with the National Coordinator of the SFI-Project, Vitaliy Storozhuk, and Professor of the Department of Forest Taxation and Forest Management of Educational and Research Institute of Forestry and Landscape Gardening of NUBIP, Viktor Myroniuk, presented key elements of the current National Forest Inventory in Ukraine. The event was attended by more than 40 representatives of government agencies, forestry enterprises, scientific and public organisations.
Ihor Budzinskyi, Нead of Forestry and Forest Regeneration Department of the State Forestry Agency of Ukraine, informed about decision by Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine regarding implementation of NFI during war time, considering limited accessibility of forests and constraints of funding.
In his speech, Vitaliy Storozhuk, referred to international experiences and outlined the role of an NFI in the modern state forest information systems. Due to the mentioned hampering factors, the current NFI is based on a limited terrestrial data collection as well as the interpretation of satellite images data. This approach will allow in short time to present results about all forests of Ukraine in relatively short time, means by the end of 2023.
In 2023 Ukrderzhlisproekt plans to carry out NFI data gathering in 16 Oblast´s of Ukraine, which means collection of information from nearly 3,000 NFI inventory plots. Out of these, collection of data from about 660 plots is funded by the German government, via the project “Special Support for National Forest Inventory”. Viktor Melnychenko described the challenges associated with this work and noted that for the first time NFI-data is collected – although selectively – from almost the entire accessible territory of the country.
Leading national expert of the SFI-Project, Professor Viktor Myroniuk, briefly presented the results of the pilot study on RS inventory in Sumy region, focusing not only on the technology of the work, but also on the role of the potential results of NFI for production and research.
Presenting the main activities of the SFI project, Vitaliy Storozhuk noted that in 2024 the project plans to use the experience of conducting RS- Inventory to develop the Concept for further development of the methodology and organisation of the NFI using RS approaches, as well as to prepare the Concept for analysing potential scenarios of timber supply in Ukraine based on the NFI data.
During the discussion it became clear that modern NFI will contribute to forest policy and management decision making, particularly considering the possibly to derive information about potential timber supply.
