War-damaged pine forests in eastern Ukraine are showing little natural regeneration, potentially complicating the long-term restoration of landscapes already affected by drought, repeated fires and landmines, according to a new study.
Researchers examining 29 burned pine stands around the city of Izium in Kharkiv Oblast found natural tree regeneration was scarce and highly uneven three years after the fires. The median estimated density was 212 new trees per hectare, while 88.4% of the photographs analyzed contained no regenerating trees at all.
Scots pine, the species that dominated the forests before the war, was found regenerating on only four of the surveyed forest sites, with just nine individual young pines recorded.
The study, published Sept. 3 in the peer-reviewed science journal Scientific Reports, found more severe fire damage was associated with a higher proportion of alien plants, mainly Canadian horseweed, a common short-term colonizer of disturbed forest. It found no significant relationship between fire severity and successful tree regeneration, which was poor across most sites.
