Today Azerbaijan focuses on the non-oil sector development. The mining industry is actively growing, to become one of its driving forces. This is detrimental to the ecology of the region. The intensive mining activity has become one of the reasons for the mountain forests degradation in the West of the country. The article is devoted to the study of the mutual influence of the forests state and the presence of minerals containing iron oxides in the soil in the Lesser Caucasus region, which involves two industrially developed districts of Azerbaijan: Dashkesan and Gadabay. The study is based on the calculation of spectral indices of satellite imagery over a significant period of time. The paper shows the processing of satellite images, including their pretreatment, spectral, geospatial and correlation analysis aimed at finding quantitative coefficients of the relationship between the iron oxides fraction in the soil and the forest state. Spectral analysis allows determining the forest state by calculating the SIPI vegetation index, as well as the iron oxide minerals presence in the soils of the region by calculating the Ferric oxides multispectral index. Geospatial analysis is designed to assess the forest state in the areas of these mineral deposits. Correlation analysis is used to compare the degradation processes in the studied districts. There are electronic maps compiled by overlapping the forest state and the iron oxide content maps. There is a dynamics confirming an increase in the share of degraded forests in the areas of research. For citation: Aliyev B.G., Mamedaliyeva V.M. The State of Forests Growing on Iron Oxide-Saturated Soils of Azerbaijan. Lesnoy Zhurnal = Russian Forestry Journal, 2022, no. 6, pp. 117–125. (In Russ.). https://doi.org/10.37482/0536-1036-2022-6-117-125

The article presents the results of long-term observations of the forest cover state in the Khachmaz region of Azerbaijan. Both the results of Earth’s remote sensing and the data of earlier observations carried out by field monitoring were used in the study. The earlier data was stored in the form of thematic maps on paper. The results of remote sensing contained multispectral satellite images obtained over several years. Image processing was performed using the QGIS program and the Semi-Automatic Classification Plugin. The processing included radiometric and atmospheric correction, as well as classification of the study area by the type of land surface coverage. Classification was performed on the basis of the spectral curves analysis in various sections of the region. The areas occupied by forests were determined based on the classification. The set of observations included data from the available archival materials – thematic maps of the Khachmaz region. A software in MATLAB was developed for processing the maps and calculating the area of forests. The program operation algorithm includes histogram analysis of the image as a whole and separately of the legend. The histogram of the legend determines the number of thematic layers of the map. They do not include layers containing unused colors, such as the colors of neighboring areas, sections of the sea, etc. Then color correction of image pixels is performed, namely, quantization of colors according to the number of specific thematic layers. Later on, morphological processing of each layer is carried out. Areas containing less than the specified number of pixels are assigned the color of the surrounding layer. The number of pixels of each layer and all layers are calculated. Finally, the obtained ratios are used to calculate the area of each layer. The data of processing of archival materials together with the results of remote sensing are summarized in a joint table. According to the table, a diagram of changes in the forest area is constructed, as well as a model in the form of a polynomial showing this dynamics. The diagram analysis revealed a tendency to a decrease in the area of forests. The forest area has decreased by 21 % for 7 years. The developed algorithm splits thematic maps into separate layers in accordance with the colors of the legend.

Among the most valuable natural resources of any country are its forest reserves. They need to be preserved. The need for forest protection also exists in Azerbaijan, where there is less forest per inhabitant than in neighboring countries. The use of modern data acquisition and processing methods as well as geographical information system technologies has reduced research in this area to a set of standard procedures. The article describes the stages of processing satellite images available in the public domain, using the case study of the north-eastern region of Azerbaijan, in order to compile forest cover maps over a number of different years. The Landsat images obtained during the summer seasons in different years from 1987 to 2018 are studied. The images covered the territory of 5 neighboring districts in the north-east of Azerbaijan. Preliminary processing of the images included radiometric calibration and atmospheric correction and was carried out using the ENVI software and the FLAASH module. The article also shows the final processing of images using the ArcGIS program in order to determine the areas covered by forests in different years. The analysis was based on the calculation of the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). The index was calculated for all considered satellite images. Then sections of images with high NDVI values were highlighted, vectorized, and the areas of the resulting polygons were found. Thus, a separate thematic layer is created for each year, showing the area of forest cover that year, i.e. 3 layers in total. The data obtained were summarized in a table, from which a diagram showing the dynamics of the forest area in the region was created. The data also became the basis for a thematic electronic map of forest loss. The continuation of this process has been described. For citation: Mamedaliyeva V.M. Changes in Forested Areas of the North-Eastern Region of Azerbaijan Revealed by Satellite Images. Lesnoy Zhurnal [Russian Forestry Journal], 2022, no. 1, pp. 88–97. DOI: 10.37482/0536-1036-2022-1-88-97

Absfrucf: The use of multitemporal space imagery in the study of vegetation change in a mountainous section of the Azerbaijan SSR is described. Maps depicting both the character and intensity of change are presented, and methods of their compilation described.