The environmental performance of the US hardwood industry can already be scrutinised in detail. Indeed, in-depth monitoring and mapping to manage and maintain its forest resource started over 90 years ago. After constant evolution, this led in 2017 to development of the American Hardwood Export Council’s (AHEC) online interactive forest map. Based on continuously collated US Forest Inventory Analysis (FIA) data, this is updated annually. It’s open to anyone to check hardwood forest growth, timber harvest, species distribution and more.
AHEC also commissioned the Seneca Creek report, probably the most exhaustive legality and sustainability risk analyses ever undertaken in the global timber industry. First published in 2008, a new edition came out in 2019 with still greater focus on the hardwood sector’s sustainability credentials.
In addition, AHEC commissioned consultancy Sphera to undertake one of the largest ever hardwood life cycle analysis projects. This led to development of its LCA tool, which enables specifiers and buyers to calculate the carbon and other environmental impacts of shipping a cubic metre of the key commercial US hardwood species to any location worldwide.
But now the US hardwood sector is going a step further in terms of provenance and environmental validation. It is involved in a pilot project with WorldForestID (WFID), to use science-based traceability techniques, such as stable isotope ratio analysis (SIRA) to geo reference timber and provide irrefutable proof of origin.
“SIRA is already proven in agriculture, where it provides provenance for meat, wheat and other food stuffs, and has been used to an extent in the timber trade to assist companies in carrying out due diligence and ensuring compliance with EUTR and similar laws,” said AHEC European director David Venables.
“From our discussions with WFID, we believe it can be applied at large scale for provenance in the US hardwood sector, representing a potentially significant advance in environmental assurance. With FIA data we can demonstrate that the forest is sustainably managed, the Seneca Creek report provides evidence of good forest governance, while our LCA research details the environmental impacts of producing and processing and shipping the timber. Sciencebased traceability can underpin all this by providing categoric evidence of where the wood came from. It looks set to be another hugely valuable piece of the sustainable sourcing jigsaw.”
SIRA, he explained, involves analysis of the isotopes of chemical elements in organic matter – nitrogen, hydrogen carbon, sulphur and oxygen – which are absorbed during a plant or animal’s life. Different isotopes have different numbers of neutrons and the blend is unique to the location where the plant or animal grew and lived. The system effectively provides a chemical geographic fingerprint which can’t be faked. “To date isotope analysis has been applied to only around 125 US red and white oak samples. The data from this is probably just enough to confirm that products in these hardwoods are from the US, possibly from specific states. But by increasing sampling intensity the level of resolution can be greatly improved to give proof of origin from specific forest inventory units, watersheds, even stands,” said Mr Venables.
AHEC’s partner in the pilot study, WFID is a consortium comprising SIRA experts Agroisolab, Kew Royal Botanic Gardens, the Forest Stewardship Council certification scheme, the US Forest Service International Programmes office and the World Resources Institute.
It has already undertaken test projects in Gabon and Malaysia working with okoumé and meranti. With AHEC, it put forward a proposal for the American pilot to the US Department of Agriculture via the US Forest Service International Programs and secured a grant of US$300,000. This will be used to start building reference datasets for a variety of technologies, including SIRA, and to support applied research to explore the finest geographic resolution that can be achieved with each method or combinations of methods.
“The research is being undertaken at various forest sites in Kentucky in cooperation with the University of Kentucky and will run until the end of 2021,” said Mr Venables. “The species selected for the trial are white oak and tulipwood, or yellow poplar. Both are highly commercial timbers, with white oak an example of a hardwood with multiple sub-species, tulipwood being a single homogenous species.”
The work will involve collection of hundreds of timber specimens, which will provide reference datasets for future identification of timber from the test area using SIRA, direct analysis in real time spectrometry (DART) and possibly genetics. These will become part of the international library of samples being built by WFID and kept at Kew Gardens in London, which is being developed to be able to identify the origin of timber from anywhere in the world.
“Science-based traceability technologies, such as SIRA, can provide irrefutable evidence to confirm or challenge claims about species identity,” said Phil Guillery of WFID. “What they have in common is that they require credible reference datasets to provide answers to questions of identity and origin. With World Forest ID, we have created the infrastructure and partnerships necessary to build the only open-source geo-referenced wood and agriculture collection in the world. Only with expanded reference collections can we overcome the barriers to increasing mainstream use of these scientific techniques and rein in the lucrative and destructive trade in illegal forest products. It’s exciting to be partnering with AHEC and the American industry to build the foundation necessary for the uptake of SIRA and other emerging testing technologies.”
It’s hoped the first outcomes of the project will be known later this year, in time for the November COP26 Climate Change talks in Glasgow.
“As part of strategies to combat the climate crisis and wider environmental degradation there’s increasing focus in international forums, such as COP, on ensuring deforestation-free supply chains across the range of farm and forest commodities, including, of course, timber,” said Mr Venables. “SIRA could clearly be a key tool in that effort.”
Depending on the success of the pilot and given the will and the funding, AHEC believes science-based traceability could be rolled out across the entire US hardwood forest.
It could be seen as having still greater value in the American hardwood industry due to the latter’s relatively low uptake of conventional sustainable forest management chain of custody certification. There are over nine million private forest owners in the US, many of them family smallholders. Most, to date, seem deterred from getting certified by the technical complexity – plus the relative cost, administrative burden and lack of incentives – for operations of their scale. Consequently certification has gained only limited traction. Science-based traceability, however, requires a one-off test of samples from a forest region to create a permanent geo referenced record. This can then be used in conjunction with other sources of evidence, such as FIA data and the Seneca Creek assessments, that these smallholdings are sustainably managed and the timber from them legally produced.
“With the data we already have, it gives us a tool with which we can definitively link actual timber production to demonstrably sustainable forests,” said Mr Venables.
“As it’s based on science, it’s also not prone to the error, misuse and fraud to which some other verification systems have been vulnerable.”
Another benefit of SIRA, he added, is that American hardwood products can be tied to specific forest areas where there is good quality data on forest carbon sequestration, giving an even more definitive carbon profile for those products.
WFID believes that a reference library for identifying timber origin within the entire US hardwood forest could be established at an acceptable cost and relatively quickly, in as little as a few years.
“The US also has the potential to become an international template for largescale, industry-wide use of science-based traceability in the forest sector,” said AHEC executive director Mike Snow. “So, in the not too distant future, it could be much more difficult to trade in illegal, unsustainably sourced timber worldwide.”
