Forensic Identification and Traceability of Timber and Charcoal: Supporting Forest Conservation and Law Enforcement

Illegal logging and the illicit trade in forest products pose major threats to biodiversity, forest governance, and the integrity of legal supply chains. By increasing pressure on natural forest stands, selectively depleting valuable tree species, and undermining sustainable forest management, these activities can compromise forest resilience and long-term conservation outcomes. Scientific verification of the taxonomic identity of wood and charcoal, and, where possible, their geographic origin, is essential for detecting fraud, verifying declarations of origin, and generating evidence that can support regulatory and legal action and strengthen the sustainable management of forest resources.

Wood anatomy has become one of the most established tools for timber identification, increasingly complemented by genetic, chemical, spectroscopic, and computational approaches that expand opportunities for species discrimination and geographic origin determination. However, scientific capacity remains uneven across regions, taxa, and analytical methods. Species-level identification is still challenging for many visually similar taxa, and determining geographic origin is even more difficult. Translating laboratory methods into tools that enforcement agencies can use reliably requires rigorous validation, representative reference materials, standardized protocols, and strong collaboration among researchers, institutions, and regulatory authorities. Strengthening this connection between scientific verification and forest management is essential to ensure that technological advances translate into measurable benefits for forest conservation.

Recent decades have brought significant advances in wood anatomy, computer vision and artificial intelligence, spectroscopy, chemical and genetic analyses, stable isotope techniques, and other emerging approaches. Despite this progress, a substantial gap remains between scientific innovation and operational implementation. Limitations in reference collections, difficulties in distinguishing closely related or anatomically similar species, challenges in determining geographic origin, and issues of forensic validation, standardization, infrastructure, cost, and technology transfer continue to restrict the widespread adoption of these methods for protecting forest resources and supporting sustainable forest governance.

This Research Topic aims to bring together studies that help bridge these gaps by advancing the identification and traceability of forest products while addressing the practical needs of forest monitoring, law enforcement, and sustainable forest governance. By strengthening the scientific basis for verifying species identity, origin, and legality, the collection will show how forensic approaches can help reduce illegal exploitation and support the conservation and sustainable management of natural forests.

We welcome contributions that develop, validate, or apply scientific approaches for the identification, traceability, and forensic verification of timber, charcoal, and other wood products, particularly where these approaches contribute to forest conservation, sustainable management, or the detection of illegal and unsustainable harvesting. We particularly encourage submissions addressing: (I) macroscopic and microscopic wood anatomy; (II) identification of commercial, threatened, endangered, or protected species; (III) intraspecific and interspecific anatomical variation; (IV) charcoal anatomy and identification; (V) reference collections and xylaria supporting validated identification and traceability protocols; (VI) standardization and validation of image-based reference datasets for wood identification; (VII) computer vision, machine learning, and artificial intelligence; (VIII) spectroscopic and chemical analytical methods; (IX) DNA barcoding, population genetics, and other molecular approaches; (X) stable isotope applications; (XI) geographic origin determination; (XII) multi-method and interdisciplinary approaches; (XIII) forensic validation and protocol standardization; (XIV) fraud detection, species substitution, and documentary verification; (XV) validation and standardization of field-deployable screening and identification tools; (XVI) applications in environmental enforcement, customs operations, and supply-chain verification; and (XVII) links between forensic verification, illegal logging, forest degradation, species conservation, and sustainable forest management.

Original Research Articles, Reviews, Methods, Perspectives, and other article types accepted by the journal will be considered. Particular emphasis will be given to manuscripts that show how methodological advances can be translated into practical applications for forest traceability, regulatory compliance, and forest law enforcement, and how these applications can ultimately strengthen forest conservation and sustainable management. In line with the journal’s scope, all submissions must clearly relate their methods to forest ecosystems, conservation, or sustainable forest management.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Policy Brief
• Review
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: Timber identification, charcoal identification, forest forensics, wood anatomy, timber traceability, illegal logging, geographic origin, artificial intelligence, forest conservation, sustainable forest management

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.