2012 Fiscal Year Final Research Report
Development of the timber provenancing method in support of legal logging and truthful declaration.
| Project/Area Number |
21688014
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (A)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Research Field |
Wood science
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| Research Institution | Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute |
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Principal Investigator |
KAGAWA Akira 独立行政法人森林総合研究所, 木材特性研究領域, 主任研究員 (40353635)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2009 – 2012
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| Keywords | 年輪 / 同位体 |
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| Research Abstract |
At the moment, the world’s forested area equivalent to more than two-thirds of the Main Island of Japan is lost every year due to illegal logging and slash/burn agriculture. The economic loss due to the illegal logging is estimated to be more than 10 billion USD, according to the OECD. In recent years, the U.S. and EU have introduced new laws to oblige timber industries to declare the geographic origin of their timber products. In this study, we developed two timber provenancing methods, where the origin is determined (1) by comparing tree-ring isotope series of unknown wood with those of known geographic origins, and (2) by comparing tree-ring isotope series with gridded global precipitation database. We succeeded to determine the geographic origin of Japanese and Russian timber at 60-300km accuracy.
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