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Scientists suggest creating a bank of wood samples to fight illegal logging

Dendrochronological examination allows automatical determining the date and place of logging wood within the accuracy of a month and 100 miles

MOSCOW, March 21. /TASS/. Scientists from Krasnoyarsk suggest creating a national Bank of wood samples, which can be used in particular to fight illegal logging, reported the press service of the Siberian Federal University.

Assisted with such a database and advanced computer algorithms the authorities will be able to determine the location and the date of logging of all samples of wood, as announced by the University.

Dendrochronological examination allows automatical determining the date and place of logging wood within the accuracy of a month and 100 miles.

Forensic dendrochronology is based on the fact that a growing part of a tree responds to the environmental changes.

"For example, in the favorable period tree forms a broad annual ring, while under adversity its annual ring is narrow, - said the rector of Siberian Federal University, academician of RAS Yevgeny Vaganov. By fixing a radial growth it is possible to determine first of all, where the felled tree grew, and second, the year of tree death, in the best case within the accuracy of a month. Moreover, the dendrochronological method allows determining whether a live or dead tree was logged, and even finding out whether different fragments belong to the trunk of one tree."

Nowadays, the budget software for such analysis is already developed and successfully implemented, but for the perfect work the completed data bank is required. To do so, the entire country should be split into parts with dimensions of about 100 km, and approximately 20 samples of wood are to be collected from each part.

A survey on collecting samples for wood data bank has been started in the territory of Siberia in 1988. A thousand wood samples currently available in the bank are refilled by the workers of the Siberian Federal University and Sukachev Institute of the Forest. The North of Siberia is well covered by the sampling. In recent years, a very intensive work has been carried out in Buryatia, in the South of Krasnoyarsk region, Altai, and Khakassia.

 

According to the FFA statistics, in 2015, only the half of violation of forest legislation has been cleared up.