■ Making timber visible (Knowledge level of logistics stops)

Calculation of Woodmiles needs the maximum possible elucidation of transportation stops from the place of harvest to roundwood market, to sawmill, to supplier, then to construction site. It also demands high level of traceability of timber.　In the temporary forestry, the traceability of timber is not so high that people usually don’t know where the timber used to build their houses come from.
The last of the Woodmiles’ indexes is called Knowledge level of logistics stops, which refers to the level of traceability of timber. It might be contradictory for us to have this index because, in principle, Woodmiles’ indexes are only calculable when all the history of logistics stops are available. Unfortunately, however, the way timber is generally transported now demands us to use provisional data to some extent when calculating the indexes.



For example, when only the information of roundwood market is available, but not rest of the logistics stops before it, we calculate out the figure on an assumption, “this timber is prefectural, so the distance from the mountain is about this long”. Therefore, Knowledge level of logistics stops can be defined as an index to demonstrate the traceability of timber upon calculating of the ratio of knowable route taken by timber from the place of harvest to consumption site. This is a step to make the indexes more reliable by demonstrate the traceability and to give incentives to those who construct houses and who live there.
To secure the traceability of timber is very important for consumers because it directly leads to safety of timber and visibility of producers and those involved. Only when the traceability of timber is firmly secured, we can be sympathetic with timber or the mountains it grew and act for preservation on the local environment.