Wetland ecosystems of the Ukrainian forest-steppe regulate regional runoff and store organic carbon, yet under a changing climate they are undergoing rapid transformation that is difficult to capture with sparse ground networks alone. This study develops a geographic information system (GIS) workflow for reconstructing the multi-decadal evolution of the wetland regime of the Hnylopyat River basin, a representative waterlogged catchment of the Ukrainian forest-steppe zone, without relying on bottom-sediment analysis or numerical soil-water modelling. A thirty-year Landsat and Sentinel-2 image archive (1995–2024) was processed in Google Earth Engine and analysed in QGIS. Two spectral water indices were mapped for each year, the Modified Normalized Difference Water Index (MNDWI) as a marker of surface wetness and the Colored Dissolved Organic Matter (CDOM) index as a proxy for dissolved organic load. Zonal statistics were used to derive the annual distribution of basin area among index classes, and per-class area trends were tested for significance. Index dynamics were then cross-related with in-situ hydrometeorological series (runoff, precipitation, evaporation) and with a concise hydrochemical characterisation of basin surface water. The GIS analysis reveals a progressive spatial differentiation of the wetland: the share of drier terrain rose while localised waterlogging cores intensified, with the high-CDOM class expanding by about ninety percent over the study period. Index area shares correlate significantly with ground runoff and evaporation, confirming that the geospatial indicators track real hydrological change. The workflow provides a transferable GIS tool for monitoring peatland transformation in other Ukrainian basins.
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