sean freeman

Wondering if there was actually two revolting branches there?

Xerxses, the cost for the workshop is very reasonable and Stockholm is a beautiful city...but I can't get from here to there in such short notice, I would need to tie so many other things into such a trip to make it worth the costs...what I was wondering was whether it would be possible to buy the proceedings (if they are to be published?) after the workshop has been run?

How might those of us geographically challenged obtain the proceedings?

The fossil record can expose some most unusual evolutionary paths, some of them still being travelled today. Prototaxites, probably the tallest organism of the late Silurian and early Devonian periods (Paleozoic era) certainly can make you ponder the transient nature of any climatic climax community. I think that Ted's arguement about co-evolutionary development is very well founded, as is the point that fungal spores can be found latent within wood tissues without injury sites being the point of entry.

Hi Andrew...nice post :>) Do you think that Alcathoe's bat has been with you guys longer (perhaps all the time) or that something is driving it further afield from its 'normal' range? I only ask since the increasing occurance of our more obvious larger bat species over here (that causes so much unjustified unhappiness amongst urban dwellers) is actually considered by most ecologists as a signal of extreme population strain in their natural range/habitat.

Those red cups are absolutely stunning....great pics brilliant, we get an orange cup fungi in the rainforests of Queensland; Rutstroemia but not the red fungi you photographed (not in Queensland anyway)

Bugger billy that's bad.... :>O Just one more reason not to go rally driving.

I have found that even the most enlightened American Arborists I know look blank faced when you mention Rayner and Boddy. It is a real problem, from my very very limited exposure to Alex Shigo, he struck me as a man who recognised the dangers of raising any individual or any one theory to the level of a deity with commandments. Whilst I am certain the fame that accompanied his published works was more than welcome he did at least state that when you stop learning you are dead, and that CODIT is a MODEL...to help interpret biological and physical alterations in wood tissues following wounding. I tend to think he would be more upset than most at the way in which quoting his works is oft used to obstruct the normal and essential extension of ideas and development of concepts within our profession. I had a similar conversation with Francis Schwarze when he was over here with David, Ted, Jill and Andrew. We really are only just beginning to get a glimpse of the depth of complex associations and relations between trees and the masses of other organisms that surround them....to use a Shigo quote...we often mistake the artifact for the whole system, the model for reality.

Spot on Hama, it is the stability and longevity of habitat (for micro and macro fauna and flora) that is so critical in this situation. I am very proud and pleased to call many of the key members of ATF friends, the UK has lead the way globally extending our understanding of the inter-relationships between trees and the broader fabric of threatened and endangered ecological systems.....if we rip these remaining parcels of woodland out does anyone really believe the plants and animals that rely on that ancient woodland ecology can wait for one-two hundred years? (or a lot more in the most critical cases). ATF and the Woodland Trust have been major factors in initiating a shift in ground in Britain, forming connections between very disperate groups within local communities, reflecting the very real connections between all aspects of the natural environment. Veteran and Ancient trees are akin to the central poles in a circus tent, with the tent being the fabric of interconnections through the local ecology. You can remove the main poles and the tent will remain standing, but if its integrity has to rely on the numerous but smaller poles it will not take much pressure to collapse the whole structure. Ancient trees, and ancient woodland represent stability, longevity and resilience in habitat, enabling other organisms to complete their own life cycles over and over, generation after generation. It is difficult at times to get our heads around the kind of time frames envolved, especially when we have so many immediate daily pressures to deal with.

Just a few quick ones from a recent site assessment... Clavaria amoena, Pleurotus opuntiae, and two shots of Suillis luteus (hmmm I think!)

As has become my habit over recent months visiting this thread and others like it continues to deliver very beautiful pictures and thoughtful comments. I have some reasonably colourful shots of my own but would like to share these pics of for us a rare fruiting body, and I'm fairly certain not seen in the UK due to its preferrence for tropical conditions. Phellinus noxious fruiting on the adventitious roots from a dead hoop pine (Araucaria Cunninghamii) that was growing for quite a few years on theedge of a drainage gully.

Hama, don't worry there are a great many more members of that mad rotters party (to quote a US friend a while back) than you think. I hope more and more Arbs will take the time and trouble to read up, listen to and personally observe the relations between fungi and plants (Trees), I really wish this material had been around when I was at school and college, but I am very grateful that it is around now.

TED produce some very thought provoking presentations by some very prominent individuals in their own specialist fields. As I have indicated in other threads I have a great deal of admiration and respect for the work Paul Stamets has done but I do recognise that he has recieved quite strong criticism for the manner in which he tends to present his opinion (based on his experience) as proven empirical fact. I entirely share his position describing fungi as gateway pioneer species in terrestrial ecosystems. It is their intimate relationship with veteran and ancient trees which for me places even greater importance on those long lived stable organisms.

Hi edenarb, I guess I should have written slightly more text, I did not mean to suggest that the advice given by you was inappropriate just that it is a term many of us (myself included) use with ease yet the assumption that the person recieving the advice understands what it is we mean is often not true. That having been said I agree when someone is considering removing virtually all of the live foliage (potentially in one go) then even a general sense of only removing 30% is appropriate. I guess I was just looking for an excuse to repeat Tony's specs since I think they are a brilliant example of how clarity can be gained with the application of Abroicultural understanding (I think I'll steal the specs:sneaky2:) In terms of the problem originally posted I wonder if the tree owner wants the trees to be commercially productive in any sense or just easier to manage?

I think most of us understand your concerns about the potential negative impacts on the trees...and the easy phrases 25%, 30% I suspect are not really all that helpful...I can do no better than to quote Tony Sorensen's post on the topic of just what 30% does or rather does not mean...

That is a shame even moreso since clearly in the past resources have been committed to try and mitigate an assessed risk of failure...I don't envy the removal work but I do envy the crane ride.

In my experience target value is simply the application of the data available to you, or more often than not the data recorded by the property manager/owner relating to occupancy/usage. If you really do have a desire to understand the system better I strongly urge you to read the original paper by Mike (referenced in the previous thread by Bundle, I think)...target and impact potential are clearly explained there.

Always remembering the tenet of "reasonable practicability" in the degree to which any assessment need go into infinate detail...it would be possible to set up a vehicle counting station and using various accepted sampling techniques calculate actual traffic flows and volumes. However we really do not need to dot hat since in Oz just as in the UK (and Europe and the USA) roads are constructed to enable the carriage of defined maximum numbers of vehicles per day. The classifications vary from country to country (state to state in our case) as do the figures but they are available, those figures represent the maximum design occupancy for that road, and that should form the basis of any calculation of target value on a specific road.

Some gems from upside down land.....

Quantified risk assessment has been around for at least 20yrs, its adaptation for the assessment of risk associated with potential failures of trees or their parts is logical and hardly surprising (perhaps its surprising it has taken so long to be adopted within tree assessments). Calculation of target value and impact potential within the qtra calculation can be extremely accurately calculated. Irrespective of the specific field of assessment; construction sites, mining operations, nuclear power plants or even trees.....within any quantified risk assessment the subjective role of the assessor will always have a significant impact on the final conclusion....for QTRA that subjective element is most significant in the assessment of the probability of failure...just how likely the worst case scenario is....this is precisely the same problem faced by all tree risk assessment methodologies. The road structure itself is not the target, rather the vehicles and the occupants travelling along it...so strictly speaking no a "busy" road does not represent a constant target value. Roads and pathways are important to the managers and owners of larger tree populations since they are generally the areas of greatest occupancy through (or alongside) their property, and their trees.

Tony has patiently and accurately answered this both here and in the other thread.

What a lovely website http://www.fungitobewith.org/index.p...d=19&Itemid=20 , thankyou David I will while away a few night hours trawling through that one:thumbup1:

Thanks Hama, yes consulting is what I do for a dedicated company based in SE Qld in a suburb called Miami (which might seem weird except when you see the kind of canal estates that have totally destroyed the original ecosystem that was here before!) Redirect is as you rightly deduced, intended to in the event of catastrophic failure catch and pull the (usually vry large) limb into a preferred area....normally against the stem. I have attached some vry poor pics (sorry I was not there to inspect the system) of a redirect installed to manage the potential failure in half of a large veteran Lophostemon confertus. The tree has two co-dominant leaders frowming a very attractive rounded canopy but has a massive fire injury through almost 30% of the stem under one of the leaders and a visble crack extending up through the union. From memory it has twin 8 Ton Cobra linking the weakened half to the structurally sound half.

Yes, they write good specs those Germans eh:sneaky2: If you get the opportunity try to get hold of the German standard or BMP (not really sure what they call it:blushing:) relating to dynamic cable bracing... when I used to get paid to climb and do such things had the chance on a number of occaisions to work for a chap who was familiar with dynamic cabling specs. In fact the last few commercial climbs I did were to install fall arrest/redirect systems into tree canopies something I really think should be utilised far more especially when confronted with veteran trees and high occupancy targets that cannot (or will not) be altered.

If the concern (which led JFL to suggest these compound bracing options) was to reduce the likelihood of creating an un-natural fulcrum along the lever arm that the limb represents then I wonder why the existing dynamic cabling systems are not seen as adequate?