![]() ![]() Wood science education programs are in most cases part of Bachelor and Master programmes at several universities worldwide with degrees directly in wood science or wood materials science, in sub-disciplines such as wood technology or in combination with other programmes such as forestry with a degree in forestry and wood science. Nowadays, wood science is subdivided in great detail, either into techniques such as molecular biology and its related biotechnological approaches, or into other specific areas adopted from botany, e.g., taxonomy, cell biology, physiology and pathology. At this time, numerous wood research institutes were established in almost all industrialized countries ( Table 1). In Germany, the first real wood research institute was founded in 1932 at the Technical University of Darmstadt and in 1934 as the Prussian Wood Research Institute in Eberswalde (later the “Reichsanstalt für Holzforschung”) under the direction of Franz Kollmann (1906–1987). Earlier, in 1906, a Forest Products Research Institute was founded in Dehradun, India. (1960), modern wood research began in 1910 with the foundation of the Forest Products Laboratory in Madison/Wisconsin in the United States (see book on 100 years FPL Madison), see also Anderson (2010). Research was still more or less focused on forestry and forest utilization. Until the early twentieth century, however, there was no targeted wood research with corresponding research institutes. (1967) provided details on the historical development of wood anatomy with numerous pioneering contributions already from the nineteenth century, followed by excellent microscopic descriptions in the first half of the twentieth century. At this time, basic knowledge in wood science was increasingly included in forestry education programmes. At the transition from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century, the importance of forest management knowledge and establishment of sustainability strategies led to the foundation of the first academic forestry institutions in several European countries such as in Russia, France, Germany, Sweden and former Austria-Hungary. Hans Carl von Carlowitz (1645–1714) developed the visionary concept of sustainability with the reforestation of cleared forest sites to ensure production of sufficient quantities of timber for the future. As a consequence, these devastating environmental changes were accompanied by massive timber shortages. Later, especially in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, an increasing demand for construction, the mining industry, as firewood in Central Europe as well as an increasing conversion of forest land into farm land led to a dramatic decline in forested areas. 2009), followed by soil erosion, karstification or even desertification. Over time, this led to severe regional and transregional deforestation, as in Mesopotamia in the Middle East or in the Mediterranean region during the ancient Greek and Roman eras ( Dotterweich 2013 Hughes 2011 Kaplan et al. With the development of powerful civilizations in ancient times, wood played an important role in their daily life and the demand for wood for buildings, as fuel, for the construction of ships, etc. Wood is one of the most remarkable natural products and has been used by humans for thousands of years. ![]()
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