Wood Trade Research Articles

Assessing the contribution of harvested wood products under greenhouse gas estimation: accounting under the Paris Agreement and the potential for double-counting among the choice of approaches

BackgroundThere are multiple approaches for estimating emissions and removals arising from harvested wood products (HWP) based on differences between when and where a given carbon stock change is calculated. At this moment, countries are free to use any HWP approach to prepare their annual greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory and determine emission reduction targets for their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), although under the Paris Agreement (PA), the production approach is used for standard reporting in GHG inventories. Global double-counting and non-counting of HWP might occur depending on the HWP approach each country uses; however, the impact of such double-counting and non-counting has not been thoroughly evaluated.ResultsWe identified all cases of global double-counting and non-counting of HWP for combinations of the six HWP approaches: ‘instantaneous oxidation’, ‘stock-change’, ‘production’, ‘stock-changes approach for HWP of domestic origin (SCAD)’, ‘simple-decay’ and ‘atmospheric-flow’ approaches. In Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs), forest land is often partly or completely excluded, especially by developing countries. In such cases, HWP approaches that require comprehensive national data on wood harvesting and trade are not suitable for estimating HWP contributions. In addition, most developing countries apply the ‘instantaneous oxidation’ at the time of harvesting. Recent GHG inventories from Annex I countries show the averaged contribution of annual HWP emissions or removals to national total emissions is nearly 1%; therefore, the potential contribution of HWP to the accounted emission reduction volume is assumed to be a smaller value.ConclusionsInstantaneous oxidation remains a pragmatic approach for countries in which wood production is not a dominant part of the economy. The combination of ‘instantaneous oxidation’ with the ‘production’, ‘SCAD’ or ‘simple-decay’ approaches could be a practical solution to realize a global HWP accounting approach the eliminates double-counting. Regardless of how global double-counting and non-counting occur, the amount is not large. To improve the accuracy of the global assessment, it is important to reduce the uncertainty of estimation regarding when and how much HWP-related emissions occur at national level.

Three new species of ambrosia beetles established in Great Britain illustrate unresolved risks from imported wood

Bark and ambrosia beetles (Scolytinae) are frequently introduced to new areas through international trade of wood and wood products. When novel host trees are encountered, they can be naive and susceptible to attack, enabling previously harmless scolytine species to become damaging, or the symbiotic fungi of ambrosia beetles to become pathogenic. Invasive Scolytinae are often only recognised after they have become harmful, so the early detection of such species is important for forest protection and management. The first nationwide survey of Scolytinae in Great Britain was conducted between 2013 and 2017, to determine the presence and distribution of previously undetected alien species. Study sites included pine, spruce and oak forests and forests near ports where wood and forest products are imported. Insect traps baited with ‘broad-spectrum’ lures were employed to maximise the diversity of scolytine species collected. Three recently established alien species were detected, Xylosandrus germanus, Gnathotrichus materiarius and Cyclorhipidion bodoanum; the latter two species are new records for Britain. All three species appear to be largely restricted to south-east England at present, and strikingly, all are ambrosia beetles. Current EU plant health regulations for wood importation and movement are limited in their effectiveness against ambrosia beetles, since bark removal does not typically destroy them. In the relatively cool summer climate of Britain, southern England appears to provide the most optimal thermal conditions for the establishment of invasive wood and bark-boring beetle species.

Machine learning approaches outperform distance- and tree-based methods for DNA barcoding of Pterocarpus wood.

Machine-learning approaches (MLAs) for DNA barcoding outperform distance- and tree-based methods on identification accuracy and cost-effectiveness to arrive at species-level identification of wood. DNA barcoding is a promising tool to combat illegal logging and associated trade, and the development of reliable and efficient analytical methods is essential for its extensive application in the trade of wood and in the forensics of natural materials more broadly. In this study, 120 DNA sequences of four barcodes (ITS2, matK, ndhF-rpl32, and rbcL) generated in our previous study and 85 downloaded from National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) were collected to establish a reference data set for six commercial Pterocarpus woods. MLAs (BLOG, BP-neural network, SMO and J48) were compared with distance- (TaxonDNA) and tree-based (NJ tree) methods based on identification accuracy and cost-effectiveness across these six species, and also were applied to discriminate the CITES-listed species Pterocarpus santalinus from its anatomically similar species P. tinctorius for forensic identification. MLAs provided higher identification accuracy (30.8-100%) than distance- (15.1-97.4%) and tree-based methods (11.1-87.5%), with SMO performing the best among the machine learning classifiers. The two-locus combination ITS2 + matK when using SMO classifier exhibited the highest resolution (100%) with the fewest barcodes for discriminating the six Pterocarpus species. The CITES-listed species P. santalinus was discriminated successfully from P. tinctorius using MLAs with a single barcode, ndhF-rpl32. This study shows that MLAs provided higher identification accuracy and cost-effectiveness for forensic application over other analytical methods in DNA barcoding of Pterocarpus wood.

ECONOMIC EVALUATION OF THE MOST IMPORTANT TREES PLANTED IN WOODS FORESTS IN THE SARABIUM REGION OF ISMAILIA GOVERNORATE

ECONOMIC EVALUATION OF THE MOST IMPORTANT TREES PLANTED IN WOODS FORESTS IN THE SARABIUM REGION OF ISMAILIA GOVERNORATE

Buildings and wood trade in Aix-en-Provence (South of France) during the Modern period

Many buildings are being restored in the city of Aix-en-Provence, southeastern France and allowed systematic dendrochronological analyses. 144 fir timbers (Abies alba Mill.) were examined and dated between 1303 and 1933. They highlight three felling phases (Medieval period, 17th-18th century, and 19th century). The best documented one corresponds to the 17th-18th centuries and coincides with significant building activity connected to the status of Aix, which is the parliamentary capital of Provence. Around Aix-en-Provence, it is difficult to find timbers with good dimensions. Our results show that timbers were transported from the Alps to Aix’s buildings. Potential testimonies of this timber trade have been found, such as raft assemblage marks, and carved signs and letters. A dendroprovenancing case study shows that between 1810 and 1890, some of Aix’s timbers could have come from the Northern French Alps or the Verdon-Durance region. Finally, the lack of timbers with good dimension and the difficulties of timber supply contributed to the development of reuse economy and technical innovation. These results are the foundation of a future well-established dendroprovenancing approach in the Southern Alps.

Incorporating a Global Perspective Into Future-Oriented Forest Management Scenarios

This research serves to integrate the concept of an “ecological footprint” into future-oriented forest management scenarios. Scenarios are commonly used to explore stakeholder perceptions of possible forest futures, and are typically focused on the local impacts of different management choices. This article illustrates how global footprint analysis can be incorporated into scenarios to enable local forest stakeholders in the EU to consider the impacts of their local decisions at national and global levels. This illustration could be helpful to the construction of a forest decision support system that includes wood trade information and social processes (simulation of management decisions under changing political/economic conditions). It finds that different future forest management scenarios involving a potential increase or decrease of the harvested timber, or potential increase or decrease of subsidies for forest protection, combined with various possible changes in local consumption patterns, might have impact on both “internal” (local) and “external” (non-local) forest footprints.

Identifying indigenous tree species for land reforestation, forest restoration, and plantation transformation on Hainan Island, China

Selecting suitable species is the most important issue for bare land reforestation, degraded secondary forest restoration, and single-species plantation transformation. However, little information has been documented related to tree species selection for these silvicultural endeavors on tropical Hainan Island of Southern China. The present study employed Baisha County, the ecological core area of Hainan Island, as a case study area. We initially inventoried a slightly disturbed primary forest and attempted to produce diameter distribution curves for each tree species. Second, the tree species were classified into shade intolerant, opportunist, and shade tolerant species based on shape of their diameter distribution curves. Third, market value was determined for each tree species based on published literature and on-site investigations at local wood trading companies. Totally 118 tree species were encountered in the inventoried forest and 13 tree species present were finally identified as potential tree species for our silvicultural endeavor on Hainan Island, of which 3 species are shade intolerant, 5 species are opportunist and 5 species are shade tolerant. Additionally, we also selected 12 tree species that were not in the inventoried forest but were extremely economically valuable and ecologically important. This study should contribute to the formulation of a sustainable forest management strategy on Hainan Island and the methodology might be replicated in other tropical region where suitable species also need to be identified for silvicultural endeavor.

Customer behavior on the Slovakian roundwood market: A case study

Fast-changing market conditions of consumer goods, influenced by customer needs, impact forest enterprises. Thus, management of forest enterprises requires customer-oriented marketing. This paper explores the preliminary issues of customer behavior in the roundwood segment of the selected oligopoly state forest enterprise in Central Europe, Slovakia. This research was carried out by the qualitative approach using standardized interview by means of structured questionnaire. According to research requirements, significant roundwood customers were identified by portfolio analysis of the chosen forest enterprise. Regarding the small rate of significant respondents (customers), non-parametric statistical methods like Spearman’s correlation coefficient and Wilcoxon test were used for the evaluation of customer behavior, or to identify significant correlation among qualitative signs of customer conduct. This paper gives further instructions for the assessment of the results regarding the wood trade manners on the Slovakian market. Additionally, this research presents a special contribution to the achievement of substantial results based on the small rate of respondents, which supports short-term marketing decision-making in trading with wood assortments on the regional trade level in practice.

Illegality and inequity in Ghana’s cocoa-forest landscape: How formalization can undermine farmers control and benefits from trees on their farms

Schemes to promote sustainable forest management have increasingly focused on addressing widespread informalities in timber production, based on the presumed links between formalisation, the maintenance of forest cover and local welfare. This trend is typified by the EU Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) initiative and associated Voluntary Partnership Agreements (VPA) aimed at eradicating the trade of illegal wood between partner countries and the EU. Yet there is concern that such initiatives might have detrimental impacts on the largely informal rights of local resource users. In order to inform the formalisation agenda, more detailed analysis of the operation of local rights, and how they might be affected by particular schemes is required.This paper focuses on Ghana as a country with a largely informal wood sector that has signed a VPA with the EU for the express purpose of rapid formalisation. Our analysis is guided by a framework for assessing which types of rights might be transformed by particular approaches to formalisation and the subsequent effect this might have on forests and people in particular local contexts. We then apply this framework to an in-depth local case study of on-farm timber governance within a cocoa-forest landscape in Ghana’s Central Region to examine how the operation of formal and informal and substantive and procedural rights shape who controls, and benefits from, on-farm timber production. We then analyse the content of the VPA in light of these local realities and assess its potential impacts.Our findings highlight how the substantive rights the state grants to companies are presumed to be balanced with the granting of procedural rights to farmers via the mechanisms of right of refusal to harvest on-farm timber, compensation for damage to cocoa crops and the negotiation of community-level Social Responsibility Agreements with private companies. Yet a comparison of these formal rights with farmers’ existing informal rights reveals that farmers’ control and access to benefits from trees on their farms are notably higher in the ‘illegal’ chainsaw dominated informal sector than in the ‘legal’ state-based system. Farmers choose to maintain trees on farms both to shade cocoa and in anticipation of benefits from their informal sale. The VPA, however, aims to eradicate all informal on-farm timber production and thus threatens existing local rights and benefit capture while diminishing incentives to maintain trees on farm. Rather than further criminalising local systems of timber governance, the maintenance of tree cover and local benefit-sharing would be better served by 1) phasing out timber concessions on farmland, 2) abandoning the distinction between planted and native trees on farms and, 3) understanding, recognizing and respecting the existing informal rights of farmers, traditional authorities and chainsaw loggers to negotiate among themselves patterns of access and control of on-farm trees and timber. In general, the case study challenges the assertion that formalisation is requisite for sustainable forest management and mandates a more nuanced and contextually informed assessment of the assumed costs and benefits associated with particular forms of legal and policy reform.

Wood anatomy of five species from Mozambique and its potential application

SUMMARY: Wood trade is strongly dependent on global economic conditions. In Africa, the market for tropical wood also has dynamic changes. In Mozambique, the international demand for wood comes mainly from emerging economies such as China and India. Almost 70 % of the country is still covered by forests and other woody vegetation. There are many species with favorable properties for wood commerce, although, at present, this is restricted to a few species. We analyzed the wood anatomy of Acacia nigrescens, Combretum imberbe, Icuria dunensis, Pericopsis angolensis and Sterculia appendiculata and comment about properties and potential use based on their anatomical composition. In general, the species presented wood diffuse pores, simple perforation plates, alternate intervessel pits, deposits in vessels; abundant axial parenchyma; multiseriate rays, very thick-walled fibers and mineral inclusions. Based on anatomical characteristics, the studied species have great potential for use in panels industry, furniture, floor, structures and craftwork.

The effect of natural disasters on the timber market

Abstract The aim of the study was to determine the impact an increased wood supply from the Beskid forests after natural disasters on the timber economy of the Węgierska Górka Forest District and its surroundings in the years 2004–2010. The analysis was based on the wood raw material sales recorded in the database of the State Forestry Information System (SILP). Information on the buyers'location and their main use for the raw material were obtained through the Central Statistical Office. Furthermore, wood material buyers were classified according to the Polish Classification of Activities (PCA) based on the year 2007, using only a subjective analysis designed for enterprises and other economic units in the national economy. Changes in sales of wood material to the selected buyer groups were investigated using statistical analyses of linear trends. A Pearson's correlation analysis verified the relationships between the buyer groups and the supply of timber assortments by the Węgierska Górka Forest District. Other studies have also shown that an increased supply of raw material in the context of natural disasters affects the types of wood buyers and their location. In addition, they have shown an increase in interest towards the purchase of raw materials among buyers engaged in the wholesale trade of wood and other non-wood producers which in turn decrease the share purchased by sawmills.

Social network analysis as a tool for the analysis of international trade of wood and non-wood forest products

Countries are almost exclusively seen as the primary unit of analysis in the study of international trade; and analysis of trade in wood and non-wood forest products is no exception to that rule. This paper uses the relationship among countries as the primary unit of analysis and introduces different procedures of social network analysis, where the goal is to demonstrate their applicability to the study of international trade of forest products. Compared to statistical analysis, additional benefit of social network analysis is the fact that the assumption of independence of observations does not hold true; and thus enables a more thorough insight into the structure of the international trade network.Data on international trade of chemical wood pulp, truffles, and aggregate forest products in the 1988–2006 period is used to demonstrate the applicability of selected network indices as descriptors of economic flows among countries. The analysis covers topics of network visualization, characteristics of the network, grouping of countries, their individual positions and modelling of international trade that includes endogenous effects such as reciprocity, and exogenous effects such as forest certification and contribution of forestry to the gross domestic product.Results show that many procedures of social network analysis can be used in the field of international trade of forest products, but that great care is needed in their contextual interpretation. Prominent topics of application are the structural trends and impact of different policies, such as the EU Timber Regulation on international trade of wood-based products.

Development of a pathway model to assess the exposure of European pine trees to pine wood nematode via the trade of wood.

Pine wood nematode (PWN), Bursaphelenchus xylophilus, is a threat for pine species (Pinus spp.) throughout the world. The nematode is native to North America, and invaded Japan, China, Korea, and Taiwan, and more recently Portugal and Spain. PWN enters new areas through trade in wood products. Once established, eradication is not practically feasible. Therefore, preventing entry of PWN into new areas is crucial. Entry risk analysis can assist in targeting management to reduce the probability of entry. Assessing the entry of PWN is challenging due to the complexity of the wood trade and the wood processing chain. In this paper, we develop a pathway model that describes the wood trade and wood processing chain to determine the structure of the entry process. We consider entry of PWN through imported coniferous wood from China, a possible origin of Portuguese populations, to Europe. We show that exposure increased over years due to an increase in imports of sawn wood. From 2000 to 2012, Europe received an estimated 84 PWN propagules from China, 88% of which arose from imported sawn wood and 12% from round wood. The region in Portugal where the PWN was first reported is among those with the highest PWN transfer per unit of imported wood due to a high host cover and vector activity. An estimated 62% of PWN is expected to enter in countries where PWN is not expected to cause the wilt of pine trees because of low summer temperatures (e.g., Belgium, Sweden, Norway). In these countries, PWN is not easily detected, and such countries can thus serve as potential reservoirs of PWN. The model identifies ports and regions with high exposure, which helps targeting monitoring and surveillance, even in areas where wilt disease is not expected to occur. In addition, we show that exposure is most efficiently reduced by additional treatments in the country of origin, and/or import wood from PWN-free zones. Pathway modelling assists plant health managers in analyzing risks along the pathway and planning measures for enhancing biosecurity.

The Role of Lumber Networks in Forest Devastation: Economic Sociology of Rural Forest Household Business in Japan

In this article, I utilize the perspectives of economic sociology to examine the structural background of forest devastation in Japan. First, I explore the factors behind cited problems for the forestry industry and demonstrate that expanded imports of inexpensively priced foreign‐sourced logs do not sufficiently explain those issues. On that basis, I then demonstrate that the concepts and analytical tools offered by economic sociology are essential to a full understanding of relevant problems. Next, to understand how the current crisis differs from that experienced by forestry households in the 1980s, I turn my focus to changes in the social networks that supported the trade in wood products. The crisis witnessed a transformation that involved disembedding sawmills from the traditional wood trading networks that had relied on cooperative ties with forestry households. Eventually, social relationships between forestry households and sawmills were severed and these households became unable to address their economic difficulties through their existing practices. Given that context, I then examine the contrasting economic behavior of sawmills and forestry households and demonstrate that exposure to global price competition forced forestry households into uncontrolled over‐cutting. Finally, I assert that economic sociology is better able to provide a more precise understanding of the true nature of the problems facing forestry in modern‐day Japan than conventional economics with its adherence to the useful but insufficient principles of market competition and economic efficiency.

Linking national wood consumption with global biodiversity and ecosystem service losses

Identifying the global hotspots of forestry driven species, ecosystem services losses and informing the consuming nations of their environmental footprint domestically and abroad is essential to design demand side interventions and induce sustainable production methods. Here we first use countryside species area relationship model to project species extinctions of four vertebrate taxa (mammals, birds, amphibians and reptiles) due to forest land use in 174 countries. We combine the projected extinctions with a global database on the monetary value of ecosystem services provided by different biomes and with bilateral trade data of wood products to calculate species extinctions and ecosystem services losses inflicted by national wood consumption and international wood trade. Results show that globally a total of 485 species are projected to go extinct due to current forest land use. About 32% of this projected loss can be attributed to land use devoted for export production. However, under the counterfactual scenario with the same consumption levels but no international trade of wood products, an additional 334 species are projected to go extinct. Globally, we find that losses of ecosystem services worth $1.5trillion/year are embodied in the timber trade. Compared to high-income nations, tropical countries such as Philippines, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka, Gambia and Bolivia presented the highest net ecosystem services losses (>3000US$/ha/year) that could not be compensated through current land rents, indicating underpriced exports. Small tropical countries also gained much lower rents per species extinction suffered. These results can help internalize these costs into the global trade through financial compensation mechanisms such as REDD+ or through price premiums on wood sourced from these countries. Overall the results can provide valuable insights for devising national strategies to meet several of the global Aichi 2020 biodiversity targets and can also be useful for life cycle assessment and product labelling schemes.

The Impact of International Trade of Raw Wood to the Economic Growth of Forest-Based Sectors in the Czech and Slovak Republics

International trade metrics can indicate the competitive advantage of the industry in international markets. However, the export of the raw materials utilized by the industry can influence company and industry performance negatively. This article assessed the effectiveness of the international trade with raw wood and its impact on the economic results of the industry. A system of indicators was formed to measure the international trade impact on the industry performance, and the following hypothesis was established: increasing the international trade with raw wood influences the economic growth of the industry negatively. The results confirmed the hypothesis, showing that the growth of export volume and also import of raw wood decreased industry performance during the monitored period. In the forestry sector, the more significant influence appeared in revenues, which influenced the profit most in the timber industry. Other findings demonstrated that the international wood trade in the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic does not create a comparative advantage, but decreases competitiveness of the forestry sector.

Commodifying Legality? Who and What Counts as Legal in the Indonesian Wood Trade

ABSTRACTThis article examines how legality verification in Indonesia, as developed under the European Union (EU) Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA), shapes who and what count as legal. A review of Indonesia’s evolving legality verification system and in-depth stakeholder interviews reveal a process of commodification driven by international demand for an interchangeable label of “legality.” This interchangeability is produced through a reduction of forest governance to a narrow set of legal standards and third-party, private auditing, which risks obscuring key governance challenges such as corruption and unclear tenure, and excluding most domestic and small-scale operators from economic and legal recognition. Given the market logic of legality licensing, it is more likely to “ratchet down” than “ratchet up” local access to, and benefit from, wood production, unless there is greater support and investment in legal and tenure reforms and improved local benefit capture.

Evaluating the impacts of wood production and trade on bird extinction risks

Biodiversity loss can be accelerated by human consumption in regions that are far removed from habitat degradation because of economic globalization, but no study has directly quantified the effects of global trade on extinction risks at a global scale with consideration for species differences. We propose a novel biodiversity footprint index based on bird extinction risks to evaluate the effects of global wood production and trade on biodiversity. Using 536 endangered bird species threatened by wood harvesting and logging, we calculated the “quasi-extinction” probabilities, that is, the probabilities that population sizes become lower than an extinction threshold after habitat loss based on initial population sizes and forest habitat loss rates. We then used bilateral wood trade data to link the biodiversity impacts in wood exporters to wood importers. We found that if recent trends in forest cover loss continue until 2100, bird species in Brazil would be the most rapidly and heavily affected by wood production and trade, followed by those in Indonesia; these two countries alone would account for about half of all global bird extinctions. Large-scale wood importers (i.e., China, Japan, and the United States) significantly elevate overseas extinction risks and, simultaneously, reduce domestic impacts, indicating a heavy responsibility of these countries for global biodiversity loss. We also conducted a scenario analysis, which showed that the total projected number of extinct species would not decrease if each country produced the amount of wood materials necessary to meet current consumption levels. This is because bird extinction risks in tropical wood importers, such as Mexico and the Philippines, as well as Japan and China will increase if these countries increase domestic wood production. Our biodiversity footprint index is useful to identify countries whose bird species are highly affected by wood production and trade, and to quantify the role of wood trade in bird species extinctions. Additional scenario analyses are needed to establish effective patterns of wood production and consumption for bird biodiversity conservation.

The impact of ancestral heath management on soils and landscapes: a reconstruction based on paleoecological analyses of soil records in the central and southeastern Netherlands

Abstract. The evolution of heathlands during the Holocene has been registered in various soil records. Paleoecological analyses of these records enable reconstruction of the changing economic and cultural management of heaths and the consequences for landscape and soils. Heaths are characteristic components of cultural landscape mosaics on sandy soils in the Netherlands. The natural habitat of heather species was moorland. At first, natural events like forest fires and storms caused small-scale forest degradation; in addition on that, the forest degradation accelerated due to cultural activities like forest grazing, wood cutting, and shifting cultivation. Heather plants invaded degraded forest soils, and heaths developed. People learned to use the heaths for economic and cultural purposes. The impact of the heath management on landscape and soils was registered in soil records of barrows, drift sand sequences, and plaggic Anthrosols. Based on pollen diagrams of such records we could reconstruct that heaths were developed and used for cattle grazing before the Bronze Age. During the late Neolithic, the Bronze Age, and Iron Age, people created the barrow landscape on the ancestral heaths. After the Iron Age, people probably continued with cattle grazing on the heaths and plaggic agriculture until the early Middle Ages. Severe forest degradation by the production of charcoal for melting iron during the Iron Age till the 6th–7th century and during the 11th–13th century for the trade of wood resulted in extensive sand drifting, a threat to the valuable heaths. The introduction of the deep, stable economy and heath sods digging in the course of the 18th century resulted in acceleration of the rise of plaggic horizons, severe heath degradation, and again extension of sand drifting. At the end of the 19th century heath lost its economic value due to the introduction of chemical fertilizers. The heaths were transformed into "new" arable fields and forests, and due to deep ploughing most soil archives were destroyed. Since AD 1980, the remaining relicts of the ancestral heaths are preserved and restored in the frame of the programs to improve the regional and national geo-biodiversity. Despite the realization of many heath restoration projects during the last decades, the area of the present heaths is just a fraction of the heath areal in AD 1900.

Development of Molecular Markers for Determining Continental Origin of Wood from White Oaks (Quercus L. sect. Quercus).

To detect and avoid illegal logging of valuable tree species, identification methods for the origin of timber are necessary. We used next-generation sequencing to identify chloroplast genome regions that differentiate the origin of white oaks from the three continents; Asia, Europe, and North America. By using the chloroplast genome of Asian Q. mongolica as a reference, we identified 861 variant sites (672 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs); 189 insertion/deletion (indel) polymorphism) from representative species of three continents (Q. mongolica from Asia; Q. petraea and Q. robur from Europe; Q. alba from North America), and we identified additional chloroplast polymorphisms in pools of 20 individuals each from Q. mongolica (789 variant sites) and Q. robur (346 variant sites). Genome sequences were screened for indels to develop markers that identify continental origin of oak species, and that can be easily evaluated using a variety of detection methods. We identified five indels and one SNP that reliably identify continent-of-origin, based on evaluations of up to 1078 individuals representing 13 white oak species and three continents. Due to the size of length polymorphisms revealed, this marker set can be visualized using capillary electrophoresis or high resolution gel (acrylamide or agarose) electrophoresis. With these markers, we provide the wood trading market with an instrument to comply with the U.S. and European laws that require timber companies to avoid the trade of illegally harvested timber.