Browsing by Author "Suominen, Janne"

In March 2013 came into effect the European Union Timber Regulation (EUTR 995/2010). The object of the Regulation is to prevent illegal trade in timber and timber harvesting inside the European Union. The Regulation will require the forest owner as well as the importer to use the system of the due diligence to ensure the legality of timber. In Finland’s case this means that in order to clarify the origin of the imported timber, the wood importer has to exercise the due diligence system. For the wood produced in Finland, the forest owner has to exercise the due diligence system including a forest use declaration and the measurement certificate of forest harvesting, in which the timber is put up for sale. The Agency for Rural affairs is the authorized public authority supervising the use of the regulation. One of the important statutory tasks of the Finnish Forest Centre is to inspect all incoming forest use declarations. The Forest Centre has not previously systematically supervised the legality of the forest harvesting made without the declaration. The objective of this research is to develop a remote sensing-based method for the Forest Centre to control the final fellings harvested without the forest use declaration. At the same time information is received about the number of missing and incorrect forest use declarations. For the objective of the research is utilized the Forest Centre’s laser scanning materials, forest resources data, aerial images, year 2012, also spatial data analysis, the classification of map objects and archives. The research result shows that in the study area, 2.6 % of all the final fellings carried out between 1.7.2006–1.7.2012 were made without the forest use declaration. In the research results there is uncertainty about the final amount of defaults, since the landowners were not consulted about the lack of declaration. For this a further research is needed. It can be seen that the method based on the remote sensing-based system is useful for controlling the final fellings harvested without the forest use declaration. The method permits to find out any violations and to take follow-up measures.