## 5 Conclusions and Recommendations for Future Work  
A comprehensive analysis of available satellite image archives was carried out for the 1991 to 2019 time period (1991, 1995, 2000, 2002, 2005, 2010, 2015 and 2019) covering mainly changes in terms of Armenian Forest policies. The Forest policy has had contradictory changes since Armenia's independence from the former USSR in 1991. The extensive conservative forest policy existing in Soviet Armenia since the 1950s has resulted in a large share of aged forest stands with unsatisfactory self-regeneration [20]. The first National Forest Code from 1994 was simply trying to keep Soviet era traditions in place and did not reflect the new realities. A lot of illegal and unregulated industrial logging and export of lumber in the 1990s and early 2000s were not sufficiently managed or regulated by law. In turn, the acting forest code, which was adopted in 2005 and included the newly introduced \"production forest\" category, was a belated response to the real situation in the forest sector. Due to these mismatched forest policies, Armenia's scarce mountain forest resources were and are undergoing severe and continuous degradation processes [21; 22].  
Landsat and Sentinel 2 data were processed with the support of VHSR imagery in 2005 and 2019 for calibration and validation. Several products were generated to identify:  
* Forest densities for each reference years
* Forest types for the most recent year (2019)
* Land cover types for each reference year
* In addition, consistent change maps were generated to identify:
* Forest cover changes including the identification of degraded versus deforested areas
* Land cover types of changes  
These provide detailed information on the nature of forest cover changes in the Dilijan National Park and what the main causes of deforestation are.  
From the analysis of the results, it is shown that the forested area is primarily covered by broadleaved species and has remained relatively high over time representing about 50% of the area. Most of the deforestation and degradation occurred prior to 2000 with a relatively stable period until 2005 when both deforestation and degradation started to increase again, although this seems to have again stabilized in recent years. In addition, there also seems to have been some substantial forest regeneration from previously deforested/degraded areas.  
From the land cover type maps produced, it would appear that the main causes of forest cover changes are linked to (i) conversion to other type of vegetation, (ii) agriculture and (iii) settlements, but as mentioned these changes are relatively minor.  
There are no previous studies over specially protected areas in Armenia using remote sensing, hence the importance of this publication. This study should provide useful information to the management of Dilijan Park and the Armenian authorities for the effectiveness and impact of their forest policies and can serve as a model for a future nationwide forest monitoring system.  
[PERSON]. ([PERSON]) was the project coordinator. [PERSON], [PERSON], [PERSON] ([PERSON]) were leading the study tasks. [PERSON], [PERSON], [PERSON] ([PERSON]), N.K., L.F. participated to the realization of the study. [PERSON] was the client of the study and follow the project from the beginning. All authors participated to the redaction, proofreading and reviewer answers. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.  
This research was funded by the European Space Agency (ESA) within the framework of the EOCLINIC project EOC0004 Characterization of Dilijan National Park Forest Ecosystems, in Armenia.  
**Acknowledgments:** We acknowledge support given by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Armenia.  
**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.