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oa Assessment of War-Damaged Agricultural Landscape Degradation in Ukraine using Satellite-Based Contrast Edge Changes
- Publisher: European Association of Geoscientists & Engineers
- Source: Conference Proceedings, 18th International Conference Monitoring of Geological Processes and Ecological Condition of the Environment, Apr 2025, Volume 2025, p.1 - 5
Abstract
Agriculture is one of the most important sectors of the Ukrainian economy. The rich chernozem soils of the country’s steppes can produce high yields when properly managed, making Ukraine a major global producer of wheat, corn and sunflowers. As a result of the full-scale Russian invasion on 24 February 2022, much of Ukraine’s cropland was subjected to intense shelling, resulting in a lack of field management and the degradation of unique agricultural landscapes. One of the indicators of agricultural landscape degradation is the decrease in the number of field boundaries and their contrast on satellite images. The methodology for mapping and monitoring degraded agricultural landscapes was created using the developed Edge-Based Indicator of Environmental Activity (EBIEA). EBIEA maps generated for several agricultural zones in Ukraine from Sentinel-2 images acquired in July 2020 and 2024 showed significant degradation of the agricultural field landscape in the war zone and in the temporarily occupied territory in southern Ukraine, which was also affected by drought due to the destruction of the irrigation canal network. The proposed mapping methodology can generally be used to assess trends in environmental activity on agricultural landscapes and identify abandoned land.
