The Department of Forest Sciences specializes in nurturing forests and the sustainable use of forest resources which includes the direct and indirect use of forest products. Recognizing that forests are environmental resources, the Department of Forest Resources and the Department of Forest Products have been reorganized into the Department of Forest Sciences, offering two programs: forest environmental science and environmental materials science.

With the expansion of global desertification, the destruction of tropical rain forests, and the increase in greenhouse gases the need for forest resource conservation has become a very important issue from an environmental perspective.

The major in forest environmental science major covers important issues and emphasizes the various virtues and functions of forests and environmental resources. The students in this major focus on how to maintain and enhance the functions of forest ecosystems, how to efficiently manage and use forest resources, and how to restore the destroyed environments or disturbed ecosystems. This course of study aims to produce well-trained people who are capable of keeping our forest resources (wildlife, forest materials, water, and recreation resources) sustainable, as well as researching methods for efficient conservation, use, and management of forest resources.

The environmental materials science program offers diverse basic and applied courses as well as laboratory and field practices in physics and chemistry to teach students how to utilize wood more effectively and efficiently both in industry and daily life. The major’s study and research material is wood, which is a natural, high molecular, environmentally friendly, and permanently recyclable material; the environmental materials science program deals with the development of a new environmentally friendly bio-material composite, a new technology for producing pulp and paper, a new wood structure, a new chemical utilization of wood components, and a new technology for cleaning pollutants by using forest microorganisms. The major is designed to create and disseminate knowledge about wood, paper science and engineering, and forest products and their utilization, through lectures, labs, and practices.

The goal of the department is to identify and resolve important problems in biology, conservation, management, and utilization of forest resources and to disseminate research results to the scientific community, resource user-groups, and the general public.