The harvesting, transportation, purchase or sale of timber in violation of laws, is a global problem that is accelerating the destruction of tropical forests, distorting international trade in timber and funding other illegal activities including trafficking of narcotics and terrorism. These undesirable impacts of the illegal trade in timber have raised the profile of the hitherto neglected field of forensic wood identification, which can play a key role in identifying illegally traded timber and preventing it from accessing international markets. The forensic identification of illegally traded timber using traditional techniques such as microscopy is challenging, because many timbers look alike, but new technology that combines high-speed mass spectrometry with massive data analysis using machine learning algorithms is revolutionizing our ability to rapidly identify timber. In this seminar I describe this technology and show how forensic wood identification can help restrict the global trade in illegally traded timber. l also describe the partnerships that have evolved between the academic institutions that hold critical reference collections of timber, and the law enforcement agencies responsible for policing the illegal trade in timber. 

Prof Phil Evans is the British Columbia Leadership Chair in Advanced Forest Products Manufacturing Technology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. He also holds an Honourary Professorship in the Department of Materials Physics, Research School of Physics at The Australian National University. Previously he was Director of Canada’s National Centre for Advanced Wood Processing at UBC. He joined UBC in 2001 from The Australian National University in Canberra where he was Director of the Centre for the Science and Engineering of Materials, and Reader in the ANU’s Department of Forestry. Phil’s research focusses on surface protection of wood, and (with colleagues at The ANU) X-ray micro-computed tomography of the micro-structure of wood. His most recent work takes advantage of high speed analytical mass spectrometry and chemometrics for the forensic identification of illegally traded timbers.