GIS-BASED MAPPING OF VEGETATION COVER IN CHERNIHIV’S GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.58407/bht.2.26.4Keywords:
green infrastructure, remote sensing, Random Forest, syntaxonomy, ChernihivAbstract
Purpose of the work. To map the vegetation cover of the structural elements of Chernihiv city’s green infrastructure (GI) network using geographic information systems, with a syntaxonomic characterization of the identified plant communities.
Methodology. Is based on the integration of three components: automated land-cover classification using the Random Forest algorithm in the Google Earth Engine cloud platform, based on median Sentinel-2 composites (summer and spring, 2020 and 2024), NDVI/EVI/LAI vegetation indices and SRTM terrain parameters; field geobotanical relevés using the Braun-Blanquet method at key network sites; and expert syntaxonomic interpretation of the mapped polygons in QGIS. Classification accuracy was assessed on an independent validation sample (n = 578).
Scientific novelty. Lies in the fact that, for the first time for a Ukrainian city, remote-sensing-based GIS mapping was integrated with syntaxonomic attribution of vegetation at the class and association level (Braun-Blanquet approach) within a coherent GI network model (first- and second-order cores, connecting corridors); it was established that the spatial configuration of syntaxa is strongly determined by the city's geomorphological structure, and that the digital elevation model proved to be the most important predictive feature of the classification model, outranking spectral bands and vegetation indices.
Conclusions. The land-cover classification achieved an Overall Accuracy of 95.85 % (Kappa = 0.942). The Chernihiv GI network comprises 12 structural elements (five first-order cores, three second-order cores, three connecting corridors, and one specialized techno-memorial node – the "Yatsevo" necropolis) with a total area of 1397.1 ha, within which eight vegetation types were identified. The pine-forest (Podusivskyi forest, Yalivshchyna) and floodplain (Kordivka) cores are the most intact, together accounting for almost 78 % of the network area, whereas connecting corridors and the "Yatsevo" necropolis show the highest degree of fragmentation and the lowest vegetation index values (edge density up to 1192 m/ha, NDVI as low as 0.527) and require priority ecological optimization measures.
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