Despite serious shortages and cut-offs of internet networks German and Ukrainian experts of National Forest Inventory met during an online meeting, held on 14.12.2022.

Heino Polley, former leading expert on implementation of Federal Forest Inventory in Germany, informed participants about general records acquired in Germany. He underlined the support by Germany provided between 2017 and 2020 and the achievements, particularly the development of legal regulations, state financing, organisational setups and technical details for NFI in Ukraine. He also pointed particularly to the need of sufficient support for NFI by policy makers and the public in general.

Olexandr Shevchuk, presented tasks and organisation of the National Forest Inventory Center (NFIC) as well as current status of implementation of NFI, namely huge disturbances by the Russian war in Ukraine, which caused lack of state financing of NFI and limited access to forests.

He also noted that the team of NFIC, which remained working part-time and has practical and professional experience in the work of NIL, today has a lot of support from SFMPA and hopes for constructive cooperation with the SFI project.

Viktor Melnychenko, general director of SFMPA, focused in his speech on the successful implementation of NFI in Ukraine with the support of the Government and the State Forest Resources Agency of Ukraine. For the further work of the NFI in the conditions of martial law, a new approach is needed with the involvement of high-tech tools, equipment, gis-technologies, software development and methodology. SFI project support will play an important role in continuing the work of the NFI in Ukraine.

Volker Sasse informed about the current situation with regard to Special Support Fund provided by the German government with the objective to overcome damages and losses by the war. The budget will be directed towards the implementation of the RS-FI, namely (i) inventory data provision by SFMPA, among them from field data gathering during 2023, (ii) procurement of inventory equipment and (iii) analysis of remote sensed forestry data as well as publication of a corresponding report on the  current status of Ukrainian forests in its full integrity.

Several technical questions have been discussed with the following conclusions:

  • Data gathering for the RS-FI will be issued in the framework of former NFI methodology, namely the NFI grid of inventory plots.
  • A concept for RS-NFI is currently in elaboration, to be finalised beginning of 2023. 
  • The structure, format and extent of data requirements for RS-FI will be provided by German experts and agreed with SFMPA till end 2022.
  • Collection and processing of inventory data should be organised in sustainable way using reliable resources, as for example field maps.
  • Heino Polley an CNFI agreed an online meeting in January 2023 to demonstrate classification of forest and non-forest using open-source software “Open Foris Collect Earth” and field data collection with “Small Forest” software.