ECOLOGICAL AND ECONOMIC ASPECTS OF AFFORESTATION IN UKRAINE IN THE CONTEXT OF SUSTAINABLE LAND USE

Abstract

Over the past half a century, the total area of forests in the world has decreased significantly. Ukraine belongs to sparsely wooded and wood-deficient countries as the share of forest cover is 15.9% against the required optimal value of 25-30%. Steppe areas are characterized by 1.9–4.8% of woodland. The total area of forest land belonging to the forest fund of Ukraine is currently 10.4 million ha, including 9.6 million ha of forest vegetation; there are restrictions on woodland management for about 3.5 million ha of forests. In Ukraine, 4.03 million ha of forests were cut down in 2008–2017; moreover, about 170.7 thous. ha were destroyed by fires, pests, storms and poachers; only 16.3% of this area was recovered. In order to ensure the optimal forest cover, it is necessary to differentially restore the forest area in Ukraine on 6.0–9.2 million ha. The average shelterbelt ratio in some physical-geographical zones of Ukraine varies within 1.3–1.5%, whereas the optimal forest cover should be 3.0–4.5%. In particular, about 76.0% of the territory of the steppe zone of Ukraine has an insufficient forest cover, which causes systematic negative manifestations of water and wind erosion. This situation is aggravated by a high percentage of land under agricultural use in the southern regions - up to 97%, which results in a low degree of ecological sustainability of landscapes in preserving soil fertility. Retrospective analysis showed a significant (1.9–2.3 times) decrease in the area of shelterbelts over the past 60 years. The total loss of shelterbelts in Ukraine over the last 10 years is 10 071 ha, which has weakened the nature conservation function of forest plantations and caused large-scale manifestations of water and wind erosion. The research used data of the State Statistics Service and the State Geocadastre of Ukraine for 2008–2017. Deciphering the Earth remote sensing data and using a series of correctly calibrated MODIS satellite images (230 × 230 m geometric resolution) made it possible to determine the correlation between the spatial distribution of the forest fund and percentage of cultivated land in Ukraine. Using the Zonal Statistics of Spatial Analyst Tools module of the ArcGIS program there has been determined the percentage of forest cover and cultivated land within separate administrative and territorial units. The difficult situation in Ukraine in which the state of forest ecosystems does not meet the ecological and economic requirements is caused by challenges in making managerial decisions in the sphere of forestry. The results obtained make it possible to substantiate the need for spatial-differential practices of forest restoration and implementation of land and water conservation measures for land fund optimization on the basis of adaptive-landscape principles which will create preconditions for the rational use and rehabilitation of forest and land resources of Ukraine in the context of sustainable land use.