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Matsala M, Odruzhenko A, Hinchuk T, Myroniuk V, Drobyshev I, Sydorenko S, Zibtsev S, Milakovsky B, Schepaschenko D, Kraxner F, Bilous A. War drives forest fire risks and highlights the need for more ecologically-sound forest management in post-war Ukraine. Sci Rep 2024; 14:4131. [PMID: 38374396 PMCID: PMC10876951 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-54811-5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/04/2023] [Accepted: 02/16/2024] [Indexed: 02/21/2024] Open
Abstract
Since 24 February 2022, Ukraine has experienced full-scale military aggression initiated by the Russian Federation. The war has had a major negative impact on vegetation cover of war-affected regions. We explored interactions between pre-war forest management and the impacts of military activities in three of the most forested Ukrainian areas of interest (AOI), affected by the war. These were forests lying between Kharkiv and Luhansk cities (AOI 'East'), forests along the Dnipro River delta (AOI 'Kherson'), and those of the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone (AOI CEZ). We used Sentinel satellite imagery to create damaged forest cover masks for the year 2022. We mapped forests with elevated fire hazard, which was defined as a degree of exposure to the fire-supporting land use (mostly an agricultural land, a common source of ignitions in Ukraine). We evaluated the forest disturbance rate in 2022, as compared to pre-war rates. We documented significant increases in non-stand replacing disturbances (low severity fires and non-fire disturbances) for all three of the AOIs. Damaged forest cover varied among the AOIs (24,180 ± 4,715 ha, or 9.3% ± 1.8% in the 'East' AOI; 7,293 ± 1,925 ha, or 15.7% ± 4.1% in the 'Kherson' AOI; 7,116 ± 1,274 ha, or 5.0% ± 0.9% in the CEZ AOI). Among the forests damaged in 2022, the 'Kherson' AOI will likely have the highest proportion of an area with elevated fire hazard in the coming decades, as compared to other regions (89% vs. 70% in the 'East' and CEZ AOIs respectively). Future fire risks and extensive war-related disturbance of forest cover call for forest management to develop strategies explicitly addressing these factors.
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Affiliation(s)
- Maksym Matsala
- Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Alnarp, Sweden.
| | - Andrii Odruzhenko
- National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine, Kyiv, Ukraine
| | - Taras Hinchuk
- Ukrainian Hydrometeorological Institute, Kyiv, Ukraine
| | - Viktor Myroniuk
- National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine, Kyiv, Ukraine
| | - Igor Drobyshev
- Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Alnarp, Sweden
- University of Quebec at Abitibi-Temiscamingue, Ville-Marie, Canada
| | - Serhii Sydorenko
- Ukrainian Order 'Sign of Honor' Research Institute of Forestry and Forest Melioration Named After G. M. Vysotsky, Kharkiv, Ukraine
| | - Sergiy Zibtsev
- National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine, Kyiv, Ukraine
| | | | | | - Florian Kraxner
- International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria
| | - Andrii Bilous
- National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine, Kyiv, Ukraine
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Myroniuk V, Zibtsev S, Bogomolov V, Goldammer JG, Soshenskyi O, Levchenko V, Matsala M. Combining Landsat time series and GEDI data for improved characterization of fuel types and canopy metrics in wildfire simulation. J Environ Manage 2023; 345:118736. [PMID: 37542807 DOI: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2023.118736] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/18/2022] [Revised: 07/24/2023] [Accepted: 07/30/2023] [Indexed: 08/07/2023]
Abstract
Wildfires in the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ) and other radioactively contaminated areas threaten human health and well-being with the potential to resuspend radionuclides. Wildfire behavior simulation is a necessary tool to examine the efficiency of fuel treatments in the CEZ, but it requires systematically updated maps of fuel types and canopy metrics. The objective of this study was to demonstrate an effective approach for mapping fuel types, canopy height (CH), and canopy cover (CC) in territories contaminated by radionuclides using Landsat time series (LTS) and Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) LiDAR observations. We combined LTS and GEDI data to map fuel types and canopy metrics used in wildfire simulations within the CEZ. Our classification model showed an adequate overall accuracy (75%) in mapping land covers and associated fuel types. The phenology metrics extracted from LTS reliably distinguished spectrally similar vegetation types (such as grasslands and croplands) which exhibit different flammability through the year. We also predicted a suite of relative heights metrics and CC at Landsat 30-m pixel level (R2 = 0.23-0.26) using the nearest neighbor technique. The imputed maps adequately captured the dynamics of CH and CC in the CEZ after recent large wildfires occurred in 2015, 2020, and 2022. Thus, we illustrate a LTS processing approach to produce wall-to-wall maps of canopy characteristics that are important for wildfire simulations. We conclude that continuous updating of land cover and canopy fuel data is crucial to ensure relevant fire management of radioactively contaminated landscapes and support local decision-making.
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Affiliation(s)
- Viktor Myroniuk
- National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine, 15 Heroiv Oborony St., Kyiv, 03041, Ukraine.
| | - Sergiy Zibtsev
- National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine, 15 Heroiv Oborony St., Kyiv, 03041, Ukraine; Regional Eastern Europe Fire Monitoring Center, 8 Buchmy St., Office 250, Kyiv, 02152, Ukraine
| | - Vadym Bogomolov
- Ukrainian Research Institute of Forestry and Forest Melioration, 86 Pushkinska St., Kharkiv, 61024, Ukraine
| | - Johann Georg Goldammer
- Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and Freiburg University, Global Fire Monitoring Center, 75 Georges-Köhler-Allee, Freiburg, 79110, Germany
| | - Oleksandr Soshenskyi
- National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine, 15 Heroiv Oborony St., Kyiv, 03041, Ukraine
| | - Viacheslav Levchenko
- National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine, 15 Heroiv Oborony St., Kyiv, 03041, Ukraine
| | - Maksym Matsala
- National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine, 15 Heroiv Oborony St., Kyiv, 03041, Ukraine; Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Southern Swedish Forest Research Centre, Box 190, 234 22, Lomma, Alnarp, Sweden
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See L, Georgieva I, Duerauer M, Kemper T, Corbane C, Maffenini L, Gallego J, Pesaresi M, Sirbu F, Ahmed R, Blyshchyk K, Magori B, Blyshchyk V, Melnyk O, Zadorozhniuk R, Mandici MT, Su YF, Rabia AH, Pérez-Hoyos A, Vasylyshyn R, Pawe CK, Bilous S, Kovalevskyi SB, Kovalevskyi SS, Bordoloi K, Bilous A, Panging K, Bilous V, Prestele R, Sahariah D, Deka A, Nath N, Neves R, Myroniuk V, Karner M, Fritz S. A crowdsourced global data set for validating built-up surface layers. Sci Data 2022; 9:13. [PMID: 35058477 PMCID: PMC8776881 DOI: 10.1038/s41597-021-01105-4] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/21/2021] [Accepted: 12/08/2021] [Indexed: 11/23/2022] Open
Abstract
Several global high-resolution built-up surface products have emerged over the last five years, taking full advantage of open sources of satellite data such as Landsat and Sentinel. However, these data sets require validation that is independent of the producers of these products. To fill this gap, we designed a validation sample set of 50 K locations using a stratified sampling approach independent of any existing global built-up surface products. We launched a crowdsourcing campaign using Geo-Wiki ( https://www.geo-wiki.org/ ) to visually interpret this sample set for built-up surfaces using very high-resolution satellite images as a source of reference data for labelling the samples, with a minimum of five validations per sample location. Data were collected for 10 m sub-pixels in an 80 × 80 m grid to allow for geo-registration errors as well as the application of different validation modes including exact pixel matching to majority or percentage agreement. The data set presented in this paper is suitable for the validation and inter-comparison of multiple products of built-up areas.
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Affiliation(s)
- Linda See
- Ecosystem Services and Management Program, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Schlossplatz 1, Laxenburg, Austria.
| | - Ivelina Georgieva
- Ecosystem Services and Management Program, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Schlossplatz 1, Laxenburg, Austria
| | - Martina Duerauer
- Ecosystem Services and Management Program, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Schlossplatz 1, Laxenburg, Austria
| | - Thomas Kemper
- European Commission, Joint Research Center, Via Enrico Fermi, 2749, I-21027, Ispra, Italy
| | - Christina Corbane
- European Commission, Joint Research Center, Via Enrico Fermi, 2749, I-21027, Ispra, Italy
| | - Luca Maffenini
- European Commission, Joint Research Center, Via Enrico Fermi, 2749, I-21027, Ispra, Italy
| | - Javier Gallego
- European Commission, Joint Research Center, Via Enrico Fermi, 2749, I-21027, Ispra, Italy
| | - Martino Pesaresi
- European Commission, Joint Research Center, Via Enrico Fermi, 2749, I-21027, Ispra, Italy
| | - Flavius Sirbu
- West University of Timisoara, Bulevardul Vasile Parvan no 4, Timisoara, 300323, Romania
| | - Rekib Ahmed
- Department of Geography, Gauhati University, Jalukbari, Guwahati, Assam, 781014, India
| | - Kateryna Blyshchyk
- Faculty of Humanities and Pedagogy, National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine (NULESU), Heroiv Oborony 15, Kyiv, 03041, Ukraine
| | - Brigitte Magori
- West University of Timisoara, Bulevardul Vasile Parvan no 4, Timisoara, 300323, Romania
| | - Volodymyr Blyshchyk
- Institute of Forestry and Landscape-Park Management, National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine (NULESU), Heroiv Oborony 15, Kyiv, 03041, Ukraine
| | - Oleksandr Melnyk
- Institute of Forestry and Landscape-Park Management, National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine (NULESU), Heroiv Oborony 15, Kyiv, 03041, Ukraine
| | - Roman Zadorozhniuk
- Institute of Forestry and Landscape-Park Management, National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine (NULESU), Heroiv Oborony 15, Kyiv, 03041, Ukraine
| | - Marian-Traian Mandici
- Regional Meteorological Center Banat-Crisana, Gheorghe Adam no 15, Timisoara, 300310, Romania
| | - Yuan-Fong Su
- Department of Harbor and River Engineering, National Taiwan Ocean University, No.2 Pei-Ning Road, Keelung, 20224, Taiwan, ROC
- National Science and Technology Center for Disaster Reduction, 9 F., No.200, Sec. 3, Beisin Rd., Xindian District, New Taipei City, 23143, Taiwan, ROC
| | - Ahmed Harb Rabia
- Damanhour University, Faculty of Agriculture, Natural Resources & Agricultural Engineering Department, El-abaadya Campus, Damanhour, 22516, El-Behera, Egypt
| | - Ana Pérez-Hoyos
- European Commission, Joint Research Center, Via Enrico Fermi, 2749, I-21027, Ispra, Italy
| | - Roman Vasylyshyn
- Institute of Forestry and Landscape-Park Management, National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine (NULESU), Heroiv Oborony 15, Kyiv, 03041, Ukraine
| | - Chandra Kant Pawe
- Department of Geography, Pragjyotish College, Guwahati-09, Guwahati, Assam, India
| | - Svitlana Bilous
- Institute of Forestry and Landscape-Park Management, National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine (NULESU), Heroiv Oborony 15, Kyiv, 03041, Ukraine
- Institute for Evolutionary Ecology, National Academy of Science of Ukraine, acad, Lebedeva, 37, Kyiv, 03143, Ukraine
| | - Serhii B Kovalevskyi
- Institute of Forestry and Landscape-Park Management, National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine (NULESU), Heroiv Oborony 15, Kyiv, 03041, Ukraine
| | - Sergii S Kovalevskyi
- Institute of Forestry and Landscape-Park Management, National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine (NULESU), Heroiv Oborony 15, Kyiv, 03041, Ukraine
| | - Kusumbor Bordoloi
- Department of Geography, Gauhati University, Jalukbari, Guwahati, Assam, 781014, India
| | - Andrii Bilous
- Institute of Forestry and Landscape-Park Management, National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine (NULESU), Heroiv Oborony 15, Kyiv, 03041, Ukraine
| | - Kripal Panging
- Department of Geography, Gauhati University, Jalukbari, Guwahati, Assam, 781014, India
| | - Valentyn Bilous
- Institute of Forestry and Landscape-Park Management, National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine (NULESU), Heroiv Oborony 15, Kyiv, 03041, Ukraine
| | - Reinhard Prestele
- Institute of Meteorology and Climate Research - Atmospheric Environmental Research (IMK-IFU), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Kreuzeckbahnstraße 19, 82467, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany
| | - Dhrubajyoti Sahariah
- Department of Geography, Gauhati University, Jalukbari, Guwahati, Assam, 781014, India
| | - Anjan Deka
- Department of Geography, Gauhati University, Jalukbari, Guwahati, Assam, 781014, India
| | - Nityaranjan Nath
- Department of Geography, Gauhati University, Jalukbari, Guwahati, Assam, 781014, India
| | - Rui Neves
- Risk and Safety Department, Higher Institute of Information and Administration Sciences, Santa Joana, 3810-488, Aveiro, Portugal
| | - Viktor Myroniuk
- Institute of Forestry and Landscape-Park Management, National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine (NULESU), Heroiv Oborony 15, Kyiv, 03041, Ukraine
| | - Mathias Karner
- Ecosystem Services and Management Program, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Schlossplatz 1, Laxenburg, Austria
| | - Steffen Fritz
- Ecosystem Services and Management Program, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Schlossplatz 1, Laxenburg, Austria
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Hall JV, Zibtsev SV, Giglio L, Skakun S, Myroniuk V, Zhuravel O, Goldammer JG, Kussul N. Environmental and political implications of underestimated cropland burning in Ukraine. Environ Res Lett 2021; 16:064019. [PMID: 34316296 PMCID: PMC8312694 DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/abfc04] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/13/2023]
Abstract
Open burning is illegal in Ukraine, yet Ukraine has, on average, 300 times more fire activity per year (2001-2019) than most European countries. In 2016 and 2017, 47% of Ukraine was identified as cultivated area, with a total of 70% of land area dedicated to agricultural use. Over 57% of all active fires in Ukraine detected using space-borne Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) during 2016 and 2017 were associated with pre-planting field clearing and post-harvest crop residue removal, meaning that the majority of these fires are preventable. Due to the small size and transient nature of cropland burns, satellite-based burned area (BA) estimates are often underestimated. Moreover, traditional spectral-based BA algorithms are not suitable for distinguishing burned from plowed fields, especially in the black soil regions of Ukraine. Therefore, we developed a method to estimate agricultural BA by calibrating VIIRS active fire data with exhaustively mapped cropland reference areas (42 958 fields). Our study found that cropland BA was significantly underestimated (by 30%-63%) in the widely used Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer-based MCD64A1 BA product, and by 95%-99.9% in Ukraine's National Greenhouse Gas Inventory. Although crop residue burns are smaller and emit far less emissions than larger wildfires, reliable monitoring of crop residue burning has a number of important benefits, including (a) improving regional air quality models and the subsequent understanding of human health impacts due to the proximity of crop residue burns to urban locations, (b) ensuring an accurate representation of predominantly smaller fires in regional emission inventories, and (c) increasing awareness of often illegal managed open burning to provide improved decision-making support for policy and resource managers.
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Affiliation(s)
- Joanne V Hall
- Department of Geographical Sciences, University of Maryland, 2181 LeFrak Hall, College Park, MD 20742, United States of America
| | - Sergiy V Zibtsev
- Institute of Forestry and Landscape-Park Management, National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine, Regional Eastern Europe Fire Monitoring Center (REEFMC), 15 Heroiv Oborony Street, Kyiv 03041, Ukraine
- Equally contributing second authors
| | - Louis Giglio
- Department of Geographical Sciences, University of Maryland, 2181 LeFrak Hall, College Park, MD 20742, United States of America
- Equally contributing second authors
| | - Sergii Skakun
- Department of Geographical Sciences, University of Maryland, 2181 LeFrak Hall, College Park, MD 20742, United States of America
- Equally contributing second authors
| | - Viktor Myroniuk
- Institute of Forestry and Landscape-Park Management, National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine, Regional Eastern Europe Fire Monitoring Center (REEFMC), 15 Heroiv Oborony Street, Kyiv 03041, Ukraine
| | - Oleksandr Zhuravel
- Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia, 26 Esplanadna Street, Kyiv 02000, Ukraine
| | - Johann Georg Goldammer
- Global Fire Monitoring Center (GFMC), Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and Freiburg University, Georges-Koehler-Allee 75, D-79110 Freiburg, Germany
| | - Nataliia Kussul
- Department of Space Information Technologies and Systems, Space Research Institute NAS Ukraine & SSA Ukraine, Kyiv 03680, Ukraine
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Evangeliou N, Zibtsev S, Myroniuk V, Zhurba M, Hamburger T, Stohl A, Balkanski Y, Paugam R, Mousseau TA, Møller AP, Kireev SI. Resuspension and atmospheric transport of radionuclides due to wildfires near the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 2015: An impact assessment. Sci Rep 2016; 6:26062. [PMID: 27184191 PMCID: PMC4869032 DOI: 10.1038/srep26062] [Citation(s) in RCA: 39] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/28/2016] [Accepted: 04/27/2016] [Indexed: 11/08/2022] Open
Abstract
In April and August 2015, two major fires in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ) caused concerns about the secondary radioactive contamination that might have spread over Europe. The present paper assessed, for the first time, the impact of these fires over Europe. About 10.9 TBq of (137)Cs, 1.5 TBq of (90)Sr, 7.8 GBq of (238)Pu, 6.3 GBq of (239)Pu, 9.4 GBq of (240)Pu and 29.7 GBq of (241)Am were released from both fire events corresponding to a serious event. The more labile elements escaped easier from the CEZ, whereas the larger refractory particles were removed more efficiently from the atmosphere mainly affecting the CEZ and its vicinity. During the spring 2015 fires, about 93% of the labile and 97% of the refractory particles ended in Eastern European countries. Similarly, during the summer 2015 fires, about 75% of the labile and 59% of the refractory radionuclides were exported from the CEZ with the majority depositing in Belarus and Russia. Effective doses were above 1 mSv y(-1) in the CEZ, but much lower in the rest of Europe contributing an additional dose to the Eastern European population, which is far below a dose from a medical X-ray.
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Affiliation(s)
- N. Evangeliou
- Norwegian Institute for Air Research (NILU), Department of Atmospheric and Climate Research (ATMOS), Kjeller, Norway
| | - S. Zibtsev
- National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine, Kiev, Ukraine
| | - V. Myroniuk
- National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine, Kiev, Ukraine
| | - M. Zhurba
- National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine, Kiev, Ukraine
| | - T. Hamburger
- Norwegian Institute for Air Research (NILU), Department of Atmospheric and Climate Research (ATMOS), Kjeller, Norway
| | - A. Stohl
- Norwegian Institute for Air Research (NILU), Department of Atmospheric and Climate Research (ATMOS), Kjeller, Norway
| | - Y. Balkanski
- CEA-UVSQ-CNRS UMR 8212, Institut Pierre et Simon Laplace, Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement (LSCE), L’Orme des Merisiers, F-91191 Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex, France
| | - R. Paugam
- King’s College London, London, United Kingdom
| | - T. A. Mousseau
- Department of Biological Sciences, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208, USA
| | - A. P. Møller
- Laboratoire d’Ecologie, Systématique et Evolution, CNRS UMR 8079, Université Paris-Sud, Bâtiment 362, F-91405 Orsay Cedex, France
| | - S. I. Kireev
- Deputy General Director of the State Enterprise “Chernobyl Special Kombinat”, Chernobyl city, 6 Shkolna street, Ukraine
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