Cause for one sided dieback on Oak tree?

[monkeybusiness]

Historic bonfire damage?

[Steve Bullman]

1 hour ago, monkeybusiness said:

Historic bonfire damage?

Wouldn’t imagine so where it is 

[openspaceman]

4 hours ago, monkeybusiness said:

Historic bonfire damage?

There are normally other telltale signs of heat damage, often sunken areas of bark where the rest of the trunk has continued to put on increment, let alone charring.

[David Humphries]

Might be worth looking at the soil for contamination, trowel out some volume and have a smell. Could be that oil, diesel or some other chem has been ‘accidently’ allowed to escape into the soil horizon in that part of the root zone and killed off the roots leading to sectional dysfunction/dieback.

 

What’s the history of the site use in that particular area?

 

How long has that street light been there, looks relatively recent.

[Steve Bullman]

On 17/07/2023 at 08:08, David Humphries said:

Might be worth looking at the soil for contamination, trowel out some volume and have a smell. Could be that oil, diesel or some other chem has been ‘accidently’ allowed to escape into the soil horizon in that part of the root zone and killed off the roots leading to sectional dysfunction/dieback.

 

What’s the history of the site use in that particular area?

 

How long has that street light been there, looks relatively recent.

Site is sheltered accomodation. Find it hard to believe or see how there could be diesel contamination or the like.

Interestingly enough I did a Picus test on an Oak on the same site some 50m apart around 3 years ago. There was a fair amount of dieback on the same same of the tree as this one, which has since been removed.

 

Also since been informed that this dieback occurred within an 8 month period 

 

[dan blocker]

On 16/07/2023 at 11:06, monkeybusiness said:

Historic bonfire damage?

As I started reading this is what I thought. Just the heat would do it, but if you say unlikely where it is🤔. The phot is one I did few weeks ago, no burn marks, bark on lower trunk and large limbs has popped. Fire was 4 years ago. Healthy tree before fire which was 30 mts away but intense.

 

Edited July 18, 2023 by dan blocker
Rubbish photo

[daltontrees]

On 14/07/2023 at 20:44, Steve Bullman said:

The light blue area to the right, it's within the stem girth but what does blue mean? Not a void but is it purely a record of velocity, and does it show that wood is present within which the sound waves travel more slowly or do they travel slowly because it's mush? Im trying to figure out how the dysfunction got to that depth (nearly 10cm) but the dieback only showed itself recently. It's pretty hard to kill wood outright quickly and leave the rest unaffected. Intense heat would do it but I can't imagine contamination damage being quite so contained. What height did you do the tomography? If it was low down, my money's on severance or rapid killing of a whole section of roots.

[Dan Maynard]

9 hours ago, Steve Bullman said:

There was a fair amount of dieback on the same same of the tree as this one, which has since been removed

Sounding bit like a trench going through.

 

Looking at a Scots pine today which has developed a lean, seems mysterious to the owner but a few years since driveway installed about 3m from the tree. People don't seem to think the roots do anything, when they're in the way of a building project.