Among the many casualties of Russia's military invasion of Ukraine are some of the most important ecosystems in Eastern Europe: Ukraine's forests and protected areas.
However, the full extent of the damage is still unknown. That's why Bellingcat has launched a new tool that will help OSINT researchers remotely track vegetation destruction caused by war.
In September 2022, Ukrainian environmental researchers visited national parks, which are more resilient to climate change than artificial plantings and support crucial biodiversity, to assess the damage of military activities to forests and wildlife. Initial findings revealed broken trees, damaged root systems from trenching and unexploded ordnance scattered in protected areas.
"Forests have suffered greatly at the front... huge areas of forest are mined"said Yehor Hrynyk, an environmental activist at Ukrainian Nature Conservation Group, for Bellingcat.
But large parts of Ukraine's national parks, mountain regions and vast forests are inaccessible for on-the-ground environmental monitoring.
This is where open source techniques come in.
OSINT Forest Area Tracker
Bellingcat a lansat “OSINT Forest Area Tracker“, găzduit pe Google Earth Engine. Instrumentul compară datele colectate de satelitul Sentinel-2, care detectează schimbările în lungimile de undă infraroșii și poate fi utilizat pentru studiul stării de sănătate a pădurilor.
The tool reveals the extent and intensity of abnormal changes on the ground. This narrows the search areas for researchers monitoring environmental damage in Ukraine.
Importantly, the map does not attribute the cause of these changes, which means that identifying the evidence is crucial. These are then corroborated with other sources before concluding that the damage was caused by military activities.
The tool uses the Normalised Burn Ratio (NBR) index to estimate burn severity in green areas.
Researchers can also use the tool to select custom data ranges for geographic locations of interest.
A burned tank and destroyed trees in Bogorodychne, Ukraine. This ruined village in the Donetsk region lies on the Siverskyi Donets River, adjacent to the Svyati Hory National Park. Photo (c) by Mykhaylo Palinchak / SOPA Images/Sipa USA
Because the official database of protected areas in Ukraine includes over 7,500 sites, researchers have chosen not to study them all - these include botanical gardens, city parks and archaeological sites. The list also includes many areas in the west of the country that were not heavily affected by the war.
The Bellingat researchers therefore selected 16 areas that had the highest number of fires detected in the first year of the war, based on data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). MODIS is a sensor that allows satellites to detect thermal anomalies, including fires in active war zones (together with VIIRS data, MODIS data can be accessed on the FIRMS system). Here you can find more details about the use of the system by OSINT researchers. Svyati Hory National Park has also been added due to its proximity to the battles.
The tool includes an updated list of predefined areas across the country, including those close to military operations. These predefined areas are referred to by their acronyms, e.g. SHNP for Svyati Hory National Park. A full list of these acronyms can be found at GitHub page.
If researchers are interested in areas of the country not included in the drop-down menu, coordinates can be entered manually.
While the new tool implicitly focuses on Ukraine, the methods it uses could be used to analyse areas in other parts of the world.
Read more on Bellingcat here.
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