Monitoring of Fires and Assessment of Changes in the State of Nature-Protected Territories of Ukraine as a Result of Military Operations

Abstract

The article presents the results of remote monitoring of the consequences of armed aggression, namely the occurrence of fires on the territory of protected areas in the combat zone. In combination with "traditional" data, satellite imagery can play a crucial role in protecting protected areas and providing evidence of environmental violations. Plant and animal life are under threat of destruction from enemy shelling by the Russian army. In addition, there is the uncontrolled spread of fire in the combat zone of Ukraine due to limited access the emergency services. Because of hostilities, landmines, and the occupation of Ukrainian territory, Ukrainian rescuers and foresters are not always able to fully prevent and fight fires. To identify the facts of fires, and to determine the coordinates of fires that lead to large-scale fires in the specified conditions, space monitoring by methods of remote sensing of the Earth is effective. Using remote sensing data, the authors present a methodology for monitoring fires as a result of military operations in Ukraine, the scale of fires, tracing the direction of their spread, etc. The help of satellite monitoring determined fires, and the causes of their occurrence making it possible to predict further spread and assess the affected areas. The publication presents the results of research on the use of remote sensing data on determining the thermal anomalies, hotbeds, and fires, and the proposed approach to monitoring of natural areas of Ukraine in the combat zone.

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“…[20] have identifi ed the features of using remote sensing data to track the impact of Russian-Ukrainian aggression and the state of water and forest resources. O. Trofi mchuk, V. Vyshnyakov, N. Shevyakina, V. Klymenko, and S. Slastin [21] have considered the problems of assessing the consequences of fi res caused by the war in Ukraine, using methods of remote sensing of the Earth.…”