Detection of War-Damaged Agricultural Fields of Ukraine Based on Vegetation Indices Using Sentinel-2 Data

As a result of the resolution of the armed military conflict on the territory of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the agricultural infrastructure of the latter was marked by large-scale destruction. Accurate identification of war-affected areas is necessary for the correct allocation of resources for the restoration of damaged fields. In this work, the search for war-damaged agricultural fields is based on data from the Sentinel-2 satellite. Cloud-free composites of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) are compared for the immediate period before and after active hostilities in a specific area (dates and locations obtained from ACLED source). Pixels whose relative difference exceeds a given threshold are considered damaged. The survey of the country's territories was conducted from February 24 to September 25, 2022, with the dates divided into two-week periods. According to the results of research, such damage to agricultural fields as funnels from explosions and shelling, traces of machinery, burnt fields, etc., were found. Detected damaged areas were verified using ACLED data. It was established that more than 50% of the total number of identified damaged areas are located within a radius of up to 5 km from the combat zone.