Main areas of research:

• Reforestation for Climate Change Mitigation
• Afforestation and Combating Desertification
• Agroforestry and Ecosystem Services
• Forest Reclamation and Combating Land Degradation

Findings:

• Containerised seedlings of Scots pine. Specifications;
• Containerised seedlings of English oak. Specifications;
• Approaches to establishing forests and reclamation plantations;
• Agroforestry zoning of Ukraine;
• Standards for minimum necessary protective forest cover of agrolandscapes;
• Methodology for assessing disturbed and reclaimed land using space imagery and GIS;
• The peculiarities of soil genesis on reclaimed lands and the development of forest site conditions under plantings with various tree and shrub species and on various soil mixtures of overburden rocks have been established.

Research prospects :

• Research on the response of plants to drought and other extreme factors;
• Development of alternative strategies or improvment of existing ones to restore deforested and degraded lands through forest planting;
• Improvement of the principles of positioning of protective plantings under climate change;
• Development of measures to stabilize the water resources of the catchments of the main rivers in the system of the country’s protective plantings and improvement of the drinking water quality;
• Development of rehabilitation methods for forest ecosystems damaged as a result of hostilities
• The search for optimized solutions for reforestation and afforestation under the influence of wild ungulates on the formation of forest ecosystems.

Possible collaborations:

• Renewal of biodiversity on degraded and reclaimed lands
• Formation of forest environment and genesis of forest ecosystems in artificial forest plantations on recultivated lands
• Formation and functioning of shelterbelts as bioengineering structures (barriers) to reduce a negative influence of nature stress-factors on the environment (farmlands)
• Formation and functioning of flood-protecting forests and forests preventing other water-related natural hazards
• Investigation of the state and dynamics of forest ecosystems under critical technogenic loading (forest plantations on land disturbed by industry)
• Studying of the adaptive potential of introduced species from other natural and climatic zones to increase biodiversity of plant complexes.