Agriculture and forestry

4.3.2. Agriculture and forestry

Under certain conditions, activities in agricultural and forestry sectors may be a source of potential danger for the environment.  Ukraine is characterized by an extremely high rate of land use and development, where over 92% of land has been converted to various economic activities.  Only 8% (5 million hectares) of land remains in a natural state (wetlands, lakes, rivers, mountains), as opposed to 82% of land intensively used in agriculture and forestry.

In the Dnipro Basin, the tillage reaches 85–94%. Extensive agricultural activities contribute significantly to soil and water pollution by pesticides, herbicides and other hazardous toxic substances.

The specific features of surface flow patterns and the lack of monitoring data make it virtually impossible to measure the transport of agrochemicals with surface runoff from agricultural land.  In order to derive some estimate of the associated pollution load, calculation techniques are applied that employ available information and do not require special studies.

Based upon the calculation results, it can be concluded that up to 12,867 tonnes of nitrogen and 423 tonnes of phosphorus annually enter the surface water bodies with surface runoff from the Dnipro drainage basin, with the major part of this load being received from the Polesye and Forest-Steppe Zones of the Basin.

Animal husbandry activities represent another major source of water pollution in the Dnipro Basin.  In addition to traditional practices, there are larger animal husbandry sites where the main types of waste include manure and liquid effluents, containing nitrogen, phosphorus, organic compounds, metals and bacterial pollution.

The mass load estimates calculated for the animal husbandry sector suggest that the total annual pollution load, entering the Dnipro Basin water bodies with this category of wastewater, can be as high as about 3,875 tonnes of nitrogen and 1,963 tonnes of phosphorus.

A major threat to human health and the environment arises from soil contamination, especially by radionuclides, heavy metals and pesticides.  A series of soil surveys carried out in Kyiv, seven district centres of Kyiv Oblast, Lugansk, Chernigiv, and in the Mykolaiv Oblast (the Pervomaisky District which has a status of the environmental disaster zone) revealed that copper, zinc, lead and cadmium were present in soil samples at extremely high concentrations exceeding the relevant MAC limits by a factor of 11 to 48.  Open-field fires also represent a major threat to the terrestrial ecosystems, especially in the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast where the forecasted fire-susceptible area is 909,000 ha, Kirovograd Oblast (823,000 ha), Zaporizhzhia Oblast (813,000 ha) and Kherson Oblast (811,000 ha).

Forests and forest plantations occupy about 10.4 million ha, or 17.2% of Ukraine’s territory.  The total area of forest land converted to forestry industries is over 120,000 ha, including 32,000 ha of arable land.

Forests are unevenly distributed across the Dnipro Basin: they are mainly concentrated in the Polesye Zone (up to 29% of the region’s area) and the Forest-Steppe Zone (14%), becoming scarce in the southern Steppe Zone (less than 4% of the region’s area).  The natural forest resource of the Ukrainian part of the Basin is in a poor state as it is mainly located within areas directly impacted by such industrial centres as Kyiv, Kremenchug, Dnipropetrovsk, Dniprodzerzhinsk, and Zaporizhzhia.  As a result of the Chernobyl accident, radionuclide contamination has affected 3.5 million hectares of forests in Ukraine and about 200,000 hectares have been withdrawn from use.

Forest fires represent a major threat to the environment.  In an average year, about 3,500 natural fire events occur in Ukraine, destroying over 5,000 ha of forest.  Up to 37% and 40% of all forest fires occur in the northern and eastern regions, respectively.

In the Dnipro Basin, the regions with the highest probability of forest fires are the Zhitomyr Oblast (about 900,000 ha of forests), Rivne Oblast (over 700,000 ha of forests), Volyn Oblast (about 600,000 ha of forests), Chernigiv Oblast (about 600,000 ha), and Kyiv Oblast (550,000 ha).

2,122 forest fires were recorded in 2001, having affected 2,980 ha of forests, including 1,610 ha affected by crowning fire.  There were 19 fire events where fire spread over an area of 5 ha in each case; three events (two in the Mykolaiv Oblast and one in the Kherson Oblast) were classified as natural disasters, having affected an area of 1,642 ha.

Next: Contaminated and disturbed sites (quarries, sludge disposal sites and waste dumps)

Previous: Potential Hot Spots of a geologic nature