Ace Tree Management, one of Australia’s premier tree companies, present an excellent video showcase of large trees in Victoria, damaged by forest fires and the various techniques used to fell them. Incredible views of trees hollowed through the burning and the work involved in their removal.

Click on the following link:

ACE TREE MANAGEMENT AUSTRALIA

Their website is also a great source of highly recommended tree work related videos, especially the crane mounted cam during a sectional dismantling operation.

Over five years, Douglass Jacobs, a professor of forestry and natural resources, and Martin-Michel Gauthier, a former doctoral student under Jacobs who is now a research scientist in the Ministry of Natural Resources in Quebec, studied the physiology of walnut trees, which are economically significant in Indiana for their lumber and veneer, and in other areas for their nuts. They found that the trees are especially sensitive to particular climates.

“Walnut is really restricted to sites not too wet or dry. It has an extremely narrow range,” said Jacobs, whose findings were published in the December issue of Annals of Forest Science. “We suspect and predict that climate change is going to have a real impact on walnuts. We may see some type of decline of the species.”

Specifically, walnuts would have difficulty tolerating droughts that could be associated with a changing climate.

“Changes in moisture could restrict its ability to survive without irrigation,” Jacobs said. “Almost all climate change models predict that climates will become drier.”

Walnuts are also sensitive to cold, so much so that they have developed a defense mechanism against late frosts. Jacobs said walnut trees don’t begin sprouting leaves until almost a month after other trees in the spring.

That defense mechanism could be compromised by extreme weather events associated with climate change scenarios. Late spring frosts after walnuts have developed leaves could kill trees.

“That, on top of the increase in temperatures, would be a problem for walnut,” Gauthier said. “The trees would basically shut down.”

In California, more than 500,000 tons of walnuts were sold for more than $1 billion in 2010, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

In Indiana, black walnuts are prized for their wood. Charles Michler, project leader of Purdue’s Hardwood Tree Improvement and Regeneration Center, said walnuts accounted for as much as 15 percent of the logs sold in Indiana at a value of about $11 million.

“Walnut is probably the most important species in the hardwood products industry today,” Michler said.

The center has a walnut breeding program that is attempting to identify trees that can be used in different climates, he said.

One goal is to find walnuts that may be able to stand up to the heat or cold stresses that trees could be subject to in a changing climate. The center is looking at seeds that come from mature trees to see if the seeds have attained defense mechanisms against changes already seen in climate.

“That could be the strategy that trees have,” Michler said. “The trees that are mature now may be affected by climate change, but the seeds they produce may be adapting through genetic changes.”

Courtesy: Science Daily

This BBC Four  programme features Blue Peter gardener Chris Collins, who celebrates the humble and sometimes hated plants we call weeds. He discovers that there is no such thing as a weed, botanically speaking, and that in fact what we call a weed has changed again and again over the last three hundred years. Chris uncovers the story of our changing relationship with weeds – in reality, the story of the battle between wilderness and civilisation. He finds out how weeds have been seen as beautiful and useful in the past, and sees how their secrets are being unlocked today in order to transform our crops.

Finally, Chris asks whether, in our quest to eliminate Japanese Knotweed or Rhododendron Ponticum, we are really engaged in an arms race we can never win. We remove weeds from our fields and gardens at our peril.

A fascinating look at some of the plants we occasionally take for granted or more often, have a passionate hatred of.

If you missed this excellent programme, it is available here to watch again.

Courtesy: BBC

It’s been dubbed the foot and mouth of the tree world. Phytophthora ramorum or sudden oak death as its commonly known is ravaging forests across the UK resulting in millions of trees being cut down. The disease has spread from the South West to Wales, the peaks and even as far north as the Isle of Mull. But experts say they are finding fewer and fewer new outbreaks. Today on the BBC Radio 4 programme, Open Country, Helen Mark visits The South West, the region that’s hardest hit, to find out what impact this disease is continuing to have on the countryside and whether there are signs that we are finally getting on top of it. LIsten Again NOW on the BBC iPlayer

Idless Wood

Listen Now on the BBC iPlayer

Italian architecture firm Stefano Boeri Architetti hopes to merge vegetation and urban architecture, with its Bosco Verticale (Vertical Forest) project. The Milan-based firm has designed a model that could see the “reforestation and naturalization” of metropolitan cities, by growing forests sky-ways. “Bosco Verticale [is a] device for the environmental survival of contemporary European cities,” says Stefano Boer.

Milan will host the first example of Bosco Verticale, with two residential towers already planned for construction. The towers, measuring 110 and 76 meters (361 and 250 feet), will become home to over 900 trees and that’s excluding a wide range of shrubs and floral plants. The basic idea is that if you were to take the building out of the picture, the amount of trees needed to plant a forest on the land surface should be equal to those growing vertically on the tower. In essence, you will be creating a 10,000 square meter (11,960 sq. yds.) forest, growing upwards.

The project also aids in filtering air pollution contained in the urban environment. This is achieved as the the plants help produce humidity, absorb CO2 and dust particles, and produce oxygen. This will improve the quality of living for the residents, and it also creates a canopy that protects the building from radiation and noise pollution.

An irrigation and filtering system will be installed, that recycles gray water for maintenance of the plants. Photovoltaic solar cells will help contribute to the building’s energy self-sufficiency.

Bosco Verticale will cost EUR65 million (US$87.5 million) and is stage one of the proposed BioMilano, which is hoped to create a green belt around the city.

Watts Consultancy champions innovative methods of bringing trees and vegetation into the urban environment, as seen in some of our header photographs. However, we remain unconvinced that these proposals could find favour in the UK with long winters and dull summers. Even so, residents on the north side of these remarkable features, even in the sunny mediterranean, may find excessive shading and disruption of the views unacceptable.

We shall watch this development with great interest.

Full details and graphics can be found at:  Bosco Verticale

With thanks to Nick Irvine and the courtesy Stefano Boeri

The Trust has uncovered a forgotten treasure, the Royal Record of King George VI’s Coronation. This incredible record details all the tree planting undertaken by thousands of schools, parishes, organisations and homeowners in 1936/7, in gardens, parks and public spaces, and even names the individuals across the UK and the world who planted the trees.

We have taken on the painstaking challenge of digitising the 1937 Royal Record. It is now available online for the very first time for you to search the records and locate trees planted near them, find out if relatives or neighbours planted trees.

Please click on the book to see all this great information and detail of the original book, even down to the sounds of pages turning. The only thing we couldn’t replicate is the amazing old book smell!

Courtesy: The Woodland Trust 

Phytophtora lateralis has been recorded on a Lawson cypress tree in Devon and scientists have confirmed the disease has arrived and could be widespread. The Lawson cypress is common in Britain’s parks and woodlands. Scientists have told the government that urgent action is needed and research needs to carried out to establish how far the disease has spread.

The action plan was announced by Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman, who said:

If we don’t act now, we could end up with a similar situation to the 1970s when more than 30 million trees in the UK died [as a result of] Dutch elm disease. [The] action plan dedicates £7m to finding ways to combat exotic pests and diseases, as well as introducing stricter controls on plants and cuttings being brought across the UK’s borders.

A report in the BBC Environment column says the disease infects several species of cypress trees, Phytophtora lateralis is also know to attack Pacific yews, a close relative of the UK’s common yew. A tree becomes infected when it comes into contact with spores in the soil or water.

The funding is not new money but reallocated funds already issued to the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). The Woodland Trust has welcomed the news but expressed reservations that reallocated rather than new funding shows the government’s priorities may be misplaced.

Courtesy: Digital Journal

The book is relevant to everybody whose work brings them into contact with trees and hedges, including:
- lawyers;
- local authorities;
- landowners;
- surveyors and architects;
- planners;
- highway engineers;
- arboricultural consultants;
- landscape architects;
- foresters.

Sir Ghilean Prance, former Director of Kew Gardens, writes in the foreword:

"This is not just a history of cases, but a book that is full of good practical advice. Read it, and you might avoid a lot of unneccessary litigation." [This text refers to the original 2002 edition of this title].

A paper published this month in the journal Landscape and Urban Planning indicates that the urban trees of the Greater London Authority (GLA) area remove somewhere between 850 and 2000 tonnes of particulate pollution (PM10) from the air every year.

An important development in this research, carried out by Dr Matthew Tallis, is that the methodology allows the prediction of how much pollution will be removed in the future as the climate and pollution emissions change. This shows the real benefits of the planned increase in the number of street trees in London and throughout England, including the GLA’s plan to increase the area of urban trees by 2050 and the current government’s ‘Big tree plant’ initiative.

The research found that the targeting of tree planting in the most polluted areas of the GLA area and particularly the use of a mixture of trees, including evergreens such as pines and evergreen oak, would have the greatest benefit to future air quality in terms of PM10 removal.

One of the paper’s authors Professor Gail Taylor explains: “Trees have evolved to remove CO₂ from the atmosphere, so it’s not surprising that they are also good at removing pollutants. Trees which have leaves the whole year are exposed to more pollution and so they take up more. Using a number of different tree species and modelling approaches, the effectiveness of the tree canopy for clean air can be optimised.”

This study presents predictions of particulate (PM10) uptake in future climate and for five tree planting scenarios in London. Using seasonal rather than hourly data was shown to have little impact on modelled annual deposition of pollution (PM10) to urban canopies, suggesting that pollution uptake can be estimated in other cities and for the future where hourly data are not available.

Co-author Peter Freer-Smith, Chief Scientist for Forest Research (Forestry Commission) and visiting professor at the University of Southampton, says: “We know that particulates can damage human health, for example exacerbating asthma and this reduction in exposure could have real benefits in some places, such as around the edge of school playgrounds. Urban greenspace and trees give a wide range of benefits and this study confirms that improving air quality is one of them and will also help us to get the most out of this benefit in future.”

This work is part of the wider EU BRIDGE (sustainaBle uRban plannIng Decision support accountinG for urban mEtabilism) project on planning sustainable cities.

Courtesy: Science Daily

Making way: relocation of pine tree took more than a year to complete

Background: The owner of a private house in Chigwell, Essex, wanted to extend his home but was impeded by a protected tree, which had to be moved to allow the extension to proceed.

Who is behind it? Epping Forest District Council, Open Spaces Landscape and Arboricultural Consultants, architect Ken Judge, tree removal contractor Ruskin.

Project Aims: To safely relocate the protected tree, allowing the house extension to go ahead.

Skills involved: Arboriculture, civil engineering, knowledge of tree protection law, tree preservation, architecture.

Manor Road, Chigwell, is an address most people would be glad to have. This road of large detached houses is set in extensive grounds and backs onto a golf course.

Those who live there are among the few who can afford the costly measures needed to meet tree preservation restrictions. One homeowner, who prefers not to be named, wanted to enlarge a medium-sized house to three storeys, taking the whole plot width, and install an internal lift and basement with a swimming pool.

Epping Forest District Council’s planners had no objection to these works but a mature pine tree stood in the rear garden where the basement would be excavated. This was subject to a tree preservation order and planners were about to reject the whole project because of this.

The owner turned to Open Spaces Landscape and Arboricultural Consultants director Graeme Drummond to find a solution. He was confronted with finding a way to safely move a tree weighing 100 tonnes, standing 12m tall and with a 67cm diameter without killing it.

After getting permission for the move from the council’s tree department, Drummond concluded that he had a 95 per cent chance of success, but only with a year’s preparation.The first part of the operation used a compressed air gun to remove the soil around the tree, leaving its roots untouched.

This allowed Drummond to see the extent of the root plate, which was about 1m deep and formed a 7m by 5m rectangle. “We dug around it then used the steel plates, which are like scaffolding poles but stronger, to go under the root plate and isolate it from the soil,” he says.

The poles created a raft under the tree to separate it from the surrounding soil. A trench created an island around the root plate, wrapped in hessian and chicken wire to prevent soil collapse. Mulch and worms were laid on top of the soil to allow organic material into the root area.

The tree then had to be moved to its new site which – although only 30m away – was a complex operation given the tree’s size. This required a digger and a bulldozer to “break the inertia of the tree, which is not just its weight but also the sticky clay soil surrounding it”, Drummond explains.

The machines were able to move the tree about 1m in each pull on two metal rails similar to railway tracks. The contractors took two days to move it to its new location.

This operation had two factors in its favour that would otherwise have made it problematic. The golf course meant there were no neighbours to object to the tree moving nearer to their property and emergency access land for the course meant the bulldozer and digger could be delivered relatively easily.

Drummond says development pressures on mature trees mean that planners will recommend more refusal notices or more trees will suffer stress and be killed. “Things like this are rare. I doubt there are more than six trees a year moved in the whole country,” he estimates.

“But with the right conditions, it is possible to move very large trees to a nearby location allowing development to occur.” He points out that while the operation is expensive, it a small cost in comparison to the value of a development.

Watts Consultancy:

We had the delight of visiting the site last December at the invitation of Keith Morley from Ruskins, having used them for many large tree moving exercises over the last 15 years or so. We took some amazing photos of the preparation for the move which, we believe, was carried out just after Christmas.

All we can say was, it was one hell of a job and had been well over a year in preparation and planning.

Anyone interested in some of the photos, contact Watts Consultancy and we will compress them and forward them on

Courtesy: Planning