Paul Barton

I am an idiot and use Digiterra.

Excellent - glad to hear a few of you are keen. Janey, surely the midlands wouldn't take long on your ferocious bike? It looks like we won't struggle for numbers to make this happen so I will confirm a date and cost soon.

Hi all, I am looking to organise a report-writing workshop in Dec/January so thought it would be worth throwing this open to any potential takers on Arbtalk. The one day course will be taught by Dave Dowson of Treelife. I am sure many of you will have met Dave or have been taught by him in the past, but if you haven't I can assure you that he is an excellent teacher. The course will take place either at our offices just south of Birmingham, or at the Treelife training centre in Leicestershire. In brief the format of the day would be to carry out an inspection on a single tree in the morning and then spend the rest of the day preparing a robust and professional report about that tree. The course is intended for those that have some previous experience of visual tree assessment and now want to build on their professional skills in order to confidently produce a quality written report. Prices will depend on the number of people we can gather for the day. If you are interested please reply to this thread or send me a PM. Paul

Thank you Giorgio.

Saw your new wagon on the M42 this afternoon Simon - looking good. Nice job Josh!

Ha ha - bit over eager with the sandwiches?!

Darn, I wish I had taken those photos! They were sent to me by the LA tree inspector as when I saw the tree there were no FBs. I can ask him if you like?

I heard the eagle went for £2800. I got to the auction quite late and there were some very low bids - the last few didn't even sell. Shame - maybe they should have publicised the auction more?

I think Simon is referring to my original post Sean - the cedar is in Coventry. At a school Simon? I can't remember the name of the school.

Very nice Simon! Nice to meet you on Friday mate.

It would be useful in a limited way - as a preliminary look at a tree that you are going to inspect....but at the end of the day you always need to get there in person and inspect it properly. Google images are often a few years old anyway. To be honest I am not sure I would make use of it.

I can't tell what that fungus is from the photos. Could you take some more pics showing the stalks and undersides of the caps?

I live in Malvern but work from Redditch.

Nice one! I quote for that job too! Doh!!

Fair enough - apologies if my response was a little harsh.

The Tech Cert is currently being re-written, and as from Autumn 2011 will be a level 4 qualification. I think you will also be able to choose to extend it to a Diploma as well. I would recommend contacting Keely at Treelife for more details. They are excellent trainers from my experience.

Hi and welcome to arbtalk. Sounds like a good dissertation. I don't mean to rude, but shouldn't your tutor be guiding you towards these information sources? When I read your title I thought you might be doing some primary research via questionnaires or something which would be cool. Asking other people how to start your research is less cool though - get in the library or in to the periodical archive!

Wow, your notes were obviously better than mine, or you have a freakish memory for details Tony! The Schwarze talk was amazing indeed. He should become a very rich man now that he can re-create the quality of Stradivarius violins on new violins by inoculating them with fungal spores! It was interesting that using Trichoderma as a biocontrol to improve a tree's defence against wood decay fungi did not work for all fungi. I seem to remember that he said Polyporus sqaummosus and G. applanatum were were not inhibited by the Trichoderma. I was also interested to see that the Trichoderma improved root development and drought tolerance. Hopefully this will attract interest from large companies with an agricultural bias and perhaps be the route to obtaining licenses for the product that will then enable Arbs to utilise them.

That looks brilliant, what a great trip.

Have a great day! Sorry I won't be there. Please take loads of photos!

Cool - it was nice to meet you mate. All the best for your management day - by the looks of it you will be fine.

I could tell you, but I would have to kill you afterwards.

Just got back after 4 days away and head still spinning! It was the first time I have been to an AA conference. I made the mistake of going to too many of the seminars (bad for head) and drinking too many ales in the evening (even worse for head). It was cool to listen to and rub shoulders with the big guns though. I really enjoyed the presentation of the iTree software. This program appears to be able to kick out massive amounts of information about the urban forest. For example the amount of carbon sequestration, cooling effects of urban areas, savings in energy production.......it was really fascinating. The good bit is that having been developed in the US they are now looking for partnerships to get it up to speed for UK use. I also enjoyed the talk on non-invasive decay detection which was mostly about the Picus and tree pulling tests. I will add my twopenneth to Tony's intelligent summary when he gets round to starting it.

What's your real name armybloke? I'll look out for you.

I had a demo from them recently. Very impressive software; does more than I would need. I still haven't found a program that will export a map with RPAs etc in to cad format. That seems to be the holy grail. Anyway, I liked Woodplan and am hoping to purchase it soon.