The indirect approach is mainly used to assess the forest-growing potential of lands in the forestry of Ukraine. For these purposes, a comparative ecological (forest typological) method is used to assess soil conditions according to their forest growth effect. The species composition of the forest stand and its productivity are the main indicators of the forest growth effect. The undoubted advantages of this method are high forestry value, low labour intensity and cost, and the main disadvantages are the subjectivity of determining the types of forest conditions (especially derivatives and artificial plantations), its insufficient environmental sensitivity, and the difficulty of applying to places where there is no forest vegetation. The aim of the study was to quantify the quality of forest land and develop markers of the forest-growing potential of soils. The studies were carried out by synthesizing two methodological approaches – forest typological as the leading method for assessing the potential of habitats and direct study of soils (field and analytical). The package of markers was developed to assess forest potential of soils based on the establishment of a correlation between the productivity of forest stands (height, quality class) and soil indicators (thickness of the humus part of the profile, pH, content of clay particles, humus, total and exchange forms of N, P, K, Ca, Mg). The package of markers depends on the soil type and consists of the following soil indicators: the content of particles of physical clay (d<0.01 mm), the thickness of the humus part, as well as the content of humus, N, Ca, K, and Mg. A gradual increase in their quantitative values leads to increase in the forest productivity of the soil and, as a result, the productivity of the forest stand.

The possibilities of using the geospatial analysis methods for visualizing land monitoring data and modelling the spatial distribution of the main agrochemical soil indicators are discussed in the article. The research was conducted within the limits of land use of RUP “Uchkhoz BGSHA” (Republic of Belarus, Mogilev region, Goretsky district). The total area of the surveyed territory was 3187.0 hectares. The geospatial analysis of the spatial distribution of humus, mobile phosphorus, mobile potassium and pHKCl was carried out using the Geostatistical Analyst module of the ArcGIS software. Semivariograms were used as the main tool for studying the structure of the spatial distribution of agrochemical indicators. The exponential function was identified as the best variogram model, the type of the circle was standard, the type and the number of sectors was 4 with a displacement of 450, and the lag was 200 metres. The interpolation accuracy was determined from the mean error (ME), mean square error (RMSE) and standard error (RMSS). The universal kriging method was used to perform the forecast and visualize the spatial distribution of agrochemical indicators. The multivariate analysis was performed using the functionality of the Raster Calculator tool, Principal Component analysis and Maximum Likelihood Classification. The search and determination of areas of sites with the most optimal agrochemical indicators were carried out by the multifactor analysis in the GIS environment. Calculation of the area of each circuit within the limits of working parcels was carried out using the utility "Zone Statistics".