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Biodiversity in dead wood
\"Fossils document the existence of trees and wood-associated organisms from almost 400 million years ago, and today there are between 400,000 and 1 million wood-inhabiting species in the world. This is the first book to synthesise the natural history and conservation needs of wood-inhabiting organisms. Presenting a thorough introduction to biodiversity in decaying wood, the book studies the rich diversity of fungi, insects and vertebrates that depend upon dead wood. It describes the functional diversity of these organisms and their specific habitat requirements in terms of host trees, decay phases, tree dimensions, microhabitats and the surrounding environment. Recognising the threats posed by timber extraction and forest management, the authors also present management options for protecting and maintaining the diversity of these species in forests as well as in agricultural landscapes and urban parks\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Machine learning-driven research in wood science: from prediction to understanding through the framework of Wood Informatics
Machine learning (ML) has rapidly expanded across wood science, enabling data-driven approaches for the characterization, performance evaluation, and process optimization of wood and wood-based materials. Although these approaches have demonstrated remarkable predictive accuracy, the field now faces critical challenges related to data heterogeneity, model generalization, and interpretability. Most existing models are developed under narrowly defined experimental conditions, limiting their robustness across different wood species, measurement instruments, and environmental settings. Similarly, while explainable artificial intelligence techniques have enhanced model transparency, their outputs often remain qualitative and insufficiently aligned with the physical and chemical mechanisms governing wood behavior. This review synthesizes the current landscape of ML-driven research in wood science and identifies key challenges for future advancement, emphasizing the need for AI-ready datasets, reliable and generalizable models, and scientifically interpretable approaches. To address these issues, the concept of Wood Informatics is introduced as an integrative framework that connects data standardization, model reliability, and physics-informed interpretability within a unified research ecosystem. By linking prediction to understanding, Wood Informatics—integrating standardized datasets, reliable models, and physically consistent interpretations—establishes a robust foundation for data-centric, reproducible, and explanatory wood science. This transition signifies not only a technological advancement but also a paradigm shift in how wood and wood-based systems are analyzed, understood, and designed.
Journal Article
Targeted acetylation of wood: a tool for tuning wood-water interactions
Wood is an increasingly important material in the sustainable transition of societies worldwide. The performance of wood in structures is intimately tied to the presence of moisture in the material, which directly affects important characteristics such as dimensions and mechanical properties, and indirectly its susceptibility to fungal decomposition. By chemical modification, the durability of wood in outdoor environments can be improved by reducing the amount of moisture present. In this study, we refined a well-known chemical modification with acetic anhydride and showed how the spatial distribution of the modification of Norway spruce (Picea abies (L.) Karst.) could be controlled with the aim of altering the wood-water interactions differently in different parts of the wood structure. By controlling the reaction conditions of the acetylation it was possible to acetylate only the cell wall-lumen interface, or uniformly modify the whole cell wall to different degrees. The spatial distribution of the acetylation was visualised by confocal Raman microspectroscopy. The results showed that by this targeted acetylation procedure it was possible to independently alter the wood-water interactions in and outside of cell walls. The cell wall-lumen interface modification altered the interaction between the wood and the water in cell lumina without affecting the interaction with water in cell walls while the uniform modification affected both. This opens up a novel path for studying wood-water interactions in very moist environments and how moisture distribution within the wood affects its susceptibility towards fungal decomposition.Graphic abstract
Journal Article
The combined effect of wetting ability and durability on outdoor performance of wood: development and verification of a new prediction approach
Comprehensive approaches to predict performance of wood products are requested by international standards, and the first attempts have been made in the frame of European research projects. However, there is still an imminent need for a methodology to implement the durability and moisture performance of wood in an engineering design method and performance classification system. The aim of this study was therefore to establish an approach to predict service life of wood above ground taking into account the combined effect of wetting ability and durability data. A comprehensive data set was obtained from laboratory durability tests and still ongoing field trials in Norway, Germany and Sweden. In addition, four different wetting ability tests were performed with the same material. Based on a dose–response concept, decay rates for specimens exposed above ground were predicted implementing various indicating factors. A model was developed and optimised taking into account the resistance of wood against soft, white and brown rot as well as relevant types of water uptake and release. Decay rates from above-ground field tests at different test sites in Norway were predicted with the model. In a second step, the model was validated using data from laboratory and field tests performed in Germany and Sweden. The model was found to be fairly reliable, and it has the advantage to get implemented into existing engineering design guidelines. The approach at hand might furthermore be used for implementing wetting ability data into performance classification as requested by European standardisation bodies.
Journal Article
Densification of timber: a review on the process, material properties, and application
Timber densification is a process that has been around since the early 1900s and is predominantly used to enhance the structural properties of timber. The process of densification provides the timber with a greater mechanical strength, hardness, abrasion resistance, and dimensional stability in comparison to its virgin counterparts. It alters the cellular structure of the timber through compression, chemical impregnation, or the combination of the two. This in turn closes the voids of the timber or fills the porosity of the cell wall structure, increasing the density of the timber and, therefore, changing its properties. Several processes are reported in literature which produce densified timber, considering the effect of various parameters, such as the compression ratio, and the temperature on the mechanical properties of the densified timber. This paper presents an overview of the current processes of timber densification and its corresponding effects. The material properties of densified timber, applications, and possible future directions are also explored, as the potential of this innovative material is still not fully realised.
Journal Article
Evolving research themes in six selected wood science journals: insights from text mining and latent dirichlet allocation
This study analyzes the status, trends, and future directions in wood science research using text-mining techniques. We applied these techniques to a textual dataset constructed from metadata of six major wood science journals, covering the period from 2002 to 2024. The research explores publication trends, international collaborations, keywords, and research networks, and it employs topic modeling using the Latent Dirichlet Allocation model. The descriptive analysis reveals a consistent increase in publication volume throughout the study period, unaffected by the COVID-19 pandemic. In contrast, international collaboration declined after 2020, likely due to the pandemic. In addition, a network analysis identified key research areas, including surface treatments, structural composites, and high-performance wood products, with lignin, mechanical properties, and moisture content emerging as central keywords. Topic modeling reveals a growing interest in wood modification technologies and an increased focus on studying wood as a sustainable material. The study confirms a shift of the field towards sustainable innovations while also highlighting the enduring relevance of traditional research areas. Future research should adapt to these evolving trends and address emerging challenges to maximize the potential of wood for carbon neutrality and sustainable development. This analysis provides a concise overview of current research trends and future directions in wood science.
Journal Article
A review of recent application of near infrared spectroscopy to wood science and technology
This review article introduces recent scientific and technical reports due to near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) at wood science and technology, most of which was published between 2006 and 2013. Many researchers reported that NIR technique was useful to detect multi traits of chemical, physical, mechanical and anatomical properties of wood materials although it was widely used in a state where characteristic cellular structure was retained. However, we should be sensitive and careful for application of NIRS, when spectra coupled with chemometrics presents unexpected good results (especially, for mechanical physical and anatomical properties). The real application for on-line or at-line monitoring in wood industry is desired as next step. Basic spectroscopic research for wooden material is also progressed. It should be a powerful and meaningful analytical spectroscopic tool.
Journal Article
Effect of targeted acetylation on wood–water interactions at high moisture states
Acetylation is a wood modification used to increase the durability. Although it is known that the wood moisture content is lowered, the exact mechanisms behind the increased durability are not known. However, since fungi need water in different locations for different purposes the location and state of water is most probably of importance in addition to the total moisture content. In a previous study, we used targeted acetylation to alter the wood–water interactions in different parts of the wood structure in water saturated and hygroscopic moisture states. The main range for fungal degradation is, however, between these moisture ranges. This study investigated the effect of targeted acetylation on location, state and amount of water at non-saturated, high moisture states using the pressure plate technique. Specimens were modified using acetic anhydride by two approaches: (1) uniform modification (2) interface modification acting on the cell wall-lumen interface. They were then conditioned to eight moisture states between 99.64 and 99.98% relative humidity in both absorption and desorption and the location and state of water was studied using Low Field Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, X-ray computed tomography and Differential Scanning Calorimetry. Capillary water was present at all the included moisture states for all specimen types, but the amounts of capillary water in absorption were small. Increasing degree of interface modification increased the amount of capillary water compared to untreated wood. In addition, the uniformly modified wood often had higher amounts of capillary water than the untreated wood. The amount of cell wall water was decreased by uniform modification, but slightly or not reduced by the interface modification. The combination of targeted modification and conditioning to high well-defined moisture states thus gave very different amounts of capillary water and cell wall water depending on the conditioning history (absorption or desorption) and choice of modification. This opens new possibilities for designing materials and moisture states for fungal degradation experiments of wood.
Journal Article
Evaluating fine-tuning and retrieval-augmented generation for domain-specific language modeling in wood science
Recent advances in large language models (LLMs) have produced impressive fluency, yet their application to specialized scientific domains like wood science remains limited. This study introduces WoodLLaMA, a domain-specific LLM fine-tuned on metadata from 16,929 wood science research articles, and examines the effects of fine-tuning and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) on model performance. Evaluation utilized two datasets not included in the training data: a Journal question–answer (QA) set representing domain-specific expertise and a Wood Handbook QA set reflecting fundamental wood science knowledge. Using intrinsic metrics (perplexity) and QA-based metrics (cosine similarity, keyword matching, and BERTScores), along with qualitative case studies, fine-tuning was found to enhance linguistic fluency while RAG improved semantic alignment. Combining fine-tuning and RAG yielded the most robust and consistent performance. These results demonstrate the complementary value of fine-tuning and RAG for building domain-specific LLMs. The study offers a methodological framework for LLM evaluation and identifies future directions—such as leveraging full-text data, enabling multilingual support, integrating multimodal resources, and incorporating human-in-the-loop learning methods—for enhancing the performance and broadening the applicability of WoodLLaMA across a diverse range of domains.
Journal Article
Water sorption in wood cell walls–data exploration of the influential physicochemical characteristics
The material properties of wood are intimately tied to the amount of moisture contained in the wood cell walls. The moisture content depends on the environmental conditions, i.e. temperature and relative humidity, but also on material characteristics of the wood itself. The exact mechanisms governing moisture equilibrium between wood cell walls and environmental conditions remain obscure, likely because multiple material characteristics have been proposed to be involved. In this study, we used a data exploration approach to illuminate the important wood characteristics determining the cell wall moisture content in the full moisture range. Specimens of nine different wood species (two softwoods and seven hardwoods) were examined in terms of their material characteristics at multiple scales and their cell wall moisture content was measured in equilibrium with both hygroscopic conditions and at water-saturation. By statistical analysis, the chemical composition was found to be the most important predictor of the cell wall moisture content in the full moisture range. For the other wood characteristics the importance differed between the low moisture range and the humid and saturated conditions. In the low moisture range, the cellulose crystallinity and hydroxyl accessibility were found to be important predictors, while at high moisture contents the microfibril orientation in the S1 and S3 layers of the cell walls was important. Overall, the results highlighted that no single wood characteristic were decisive for the cell wall moisture content, and each of the predictors identified by the analysis had only a small effect in themselves on the cell wall moisture content. Wood characteristics with a major effect on the cell wall moisture content were, therefore, not identified..
Journal Article