Trees in terrible condition everywhere - advice and opinions needed

[Quercus Robert]

Here are photos of chestnuts in Portchester. I have included a photo of them in their general setting - I feel this is important because many trees seem to look just fine from a distance but the trunks and bark tell a different story.

[Quercus Robert]

And here are some more:

[Quercus Robert]

And more and more and

[Quercus Robert]

Urgh. Not being selective with these photos, these are in order as I went through the trees. Obviously these are all from the same location, but by and large this is the same as I've seen on chestnuts everywhere else

[Quercus Robert]

Assuming the damage to the trunk hasn't sprung suddenly upon this tree since it was cut back, can anyone tell me why it was left in place like this?

[Quercus Robert]

OK well spontaneous xylem cavitation is interesting. Has the weather changed enough to cause this? Presumably this would be dramatic swings in weather conditions causing sap pressure in the xylem to drop below that of dissolved air. Well, investigating this avenue looks horrendous.

 

Re your comments on Milgram, I totally agree that people are, or would be, unable to change their behaviour even if (when) faced with the undeniable proof that their actions are devastating their environment. Look at Fukushima: they haven't succeeding in capping it. All the US environmental agencies did was raise their postulated "safe" level of radiation by about 10,000% - then carry on greenlighting more nuclear plants. I don't think people are stupid - I think a very quick calculation occurs when these issues arise, balancing long-term hardship against short-term gain, and short-term gain wins, every time, because that's how we're wired.

 

Re levels of aluminium, I thought aluminium was reasonably plentiful within the environment. How can aluminium be in air? I am aware that it is a common link in certain human metabolic diseases (I include autism here), though every disease is of course unique and multifactorial.

 

pH change - OK well there were efforts to establish soil monitoring schemes in the UK circa 2008...

 

Defra, UK - Science Search

 

...under the auspices of the Environment Agency. Here:

 

http://www.sniffer.org.uk/files/8313/4183/8007/LQ09_Project_Summary.pdf

 

the same thing is mentioned ("Next Steps This project feeds into the next phase of the UK-SIC remit, which involves the designing of a UK Soil Monitoring Scheme.") (2007)

 

Finally I find a soil map, which is pretty interesting:

 

United Kingdom Soil Observatory

 

But crowdsourced? The pH measurements appear meaningless.

[Jim B]

The lower damage in these photos looks like operator error being hit by the flail and the higher damage old grey squirrel barking.

[Paul Melarange]

Most of the photos just show historic bark damage, likely to have been caused by machinery or animals. This damage is not necessarily an indicator of poor health in itself. If the wounds are not occluding then it's a bit different.

 

The last image (0785) shows a tree that appears to have had a massive reduction, which is likely to have resulted in massive amounts of dysfunction in the stem. It is no wonder patches of bark have fallen off!

[Paul Barton]

Agree with Paul above. Looks like fairly typical strimmer damage, plus a bit of squirrel damage.

 

Fairly common but not good of course. If you're really interested in finding out if the trees are struggling for survival in the short term, you could try some chlorophyll fluorescence testing using an Arborcheck kit: http://www.arborcheck.com/how-it-works/.

[Adam M]

The lower damage in these photos looks like operator error being hit by the flail and the higher damage old grey squirrel barking.

 

Agreed.