Impact of climate change on LULUCF reporting in Bulgaria based on Copernicus data

Land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) is a greenhouse gas inventory sector that evaluates greenhouse gas changes in the atmosphere from land use and land-use change. EU LULUCF Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2018/841) obliges Member States to use geographically explicit approaches to derive the land use and land use change(LULUC) statistics used for compiling and reporting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and removals from the LULUCF sector. These emissions/removals are subject to an inventory which must be reported annually under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. This study emphasizes on remote sensing importance for establishing the land use and land cover (LU/LC) distribution, possibilities to detect LU/LC changes associated to LULUCF sector in the Yougoiztochen (southeastern) region in Bulgaria. Data from different sources have been processed to interpret possible reasons for differences in the LU/LC categories distribution considering the impact of climate change factors. Scrutinizing the climate change impact could contribute further in the GHG emission inventory process. The remotelysensed data should be considered by stakeholders as a means to fill in gaps and possibilities to meet the needs for a more consistent approach and to support monitoring and reporting of greenhouse gas emissions and removals from LULUCF sector.