64 | Feature: World Forest ID
KEW BUILDS GLOBAL WOOD LIBRARY
knowledge, it is also being turned to address the threats facing them. Kew’s laboratories are focusing on adverse
Above: Kew is the natural home for the wood sample reference collection of WFID
The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is the natural home for the wood sample reference collection of WFID. Trees have been among Kew’s most prized possessions since it was turned from royal estate into public botanic gardens in 1840. Today it has over 14,000 across its 300 hectares, comprising more than 2,000 species from every part of the planet. What drove development of Kew was the Victorians’ unquenchable thirst for knowledge of the natural world. That sheer passion for trees and plants remains undimmed and now, along with near two centuries of horticultural and arboricultural
environmental impacts of human activity on the plant world. They’re looking at how its variety supports wider biodiversity and, notably, the role of forests in carbon storage and climate regulation and how they can be maintained to combat global warming. This work is exemplified by Kew’s involvement with WFID and its mission to enable use of latest, science-based traceability methods to monitor and police the market in the world’s most traded wood species and help crack down on illegal logging. Central to the project is its library of geo-
referenced samples of these target species gathered worldwide, with WFID estimating that it will ultimately contain up to 500,000. Making Kew even more the obvious place to house this is its experience curating other large natural material collections. Its sister site at Wakehurst holds the Millennium Seedbank, storing 2.4 billion seeds, and Kew itself has one of the world’s largest herbaria, a collection of 7 million preserved plants. Arriving at Kew in their individually bar-
coded collection bags, the WFID samples undergo a thorough quarantine process. Methods of analysis then undertaken at its Jodrell laboratories include examination
with the XyloTron macroscopic imaging tool. This connects to an international database of images, where a machine learning algorithm uses pattern recognition to match species. It is additionally using its new £250,000 DART Mass Spectrometry (DART-TOFMS) machine and cross-references samples with the herbarium for leaf, fruit and seed identification. It also despatches sections of the samples to other members of the WFID consortium for double checking and further types of analysis. The resulting data is then available for cross- referencing against analysis of traded timber to verify species and provenance. “We’re also working with organisations
in other countries to build their sampling and analysis capacity,” said Dr Victor Deklerck, wood anatomy and timber identification specialist and WFID research team leader at Kew. “What makes WFID unique in this field is having such a diverse group of experts worldwide, with access to all the analysis techniques. It’s a really strong consortium.” Kew’s involvement with WFID, he added, is a long-term commitment, a natural addition to its other work supporting diversity in the natural world and maintenance of its forests. ■
◄ techniques to rein in the lucrative and destructive trade in illegal forest products”. But he’s keen to stress that it’s also a resource for highlighting what is “good wood as well as bad”. Thus it can be employed by the legitimate timber trade to provide customers cast-iron assurance that its wood is legally and sustainably sourced and its supply chains are deforestation-free.
This, in fact, is the goal of the new WFID project with the US hardwood industry. Working with the state university and backed by USFSIP, World Forest ID is initially undertaking sample collection and analysis of US white oak and tulipwood in Kentucky. Once this pilot is complete, the objective is to roll out the process across the entire US hardwood forest to create a national identification and traceability database for the 12 lead American export species. This work will help combat illegal traders who pass off timber from other sources – and other species – as the most popular American varieties. US white oak is a particular target for this.
At the same time, the US industry will be
able to use the species and traceability data in conjunction with existing tools, studies and analysis demonstrating the legality and sustainability of the US hardwood resource. These include the AHEC website’s Interactive Forest Map. Based on US Forest Inventory Analysis data, this shows hardwood forest, growth, timber removal, species distribution and more.
AHEC has also developed a life cycle analysis tool, which specifiers and buyers can use to calculate carbon and other environmental impacts of shipping American hardwoods to any destination worldwide. Additionally, buyers and specifiers can refer to the AHEC-commissioned Seneca Creek report on the US hardwood industry, billed as the most comprehensive legality and sustainability risk analysis study ever undertaken in the international timber sector. “With the data we already have, WFID’s geo-referenced sampling and wood analysis will give us the tools to link timber production to demonstrably sustainable forest,” said AHEC European director David Venables. “As its approach is science-based,
TTJ | January/February 2022 |
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it’s also not prone to the error, misuse or fraud to which some verification systems are vulnerable.” AHEC executive director Mike Snow added that with WFID, the US had the potential to create an “international template for large- scale, industry-wide use of science-based traceability in the forest sector”. AHEC and others have requested the US Congress for an appropriation for WFID’s America-wide project and Mr Guillery says it could be completed in as little as two years. He’s also confident WFID’s ambition for a global timber sample collection and wood analysis database is achievable. “We’ve demonstrated our approach works worldwide, collecting and geo-referencing samples in some challenging environments,” he said. “We believe our international project can be completed in a decade.” ■
FURTHER INFORMATION For more:
https://worldforestid.org/
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