ScottF

Depends on the targets, crown form, crown condition, exposure to wind and a number of other factors. That said, it's not something beech recovers from on the whole as any compartmentalisation tends to be pretty ineffective. Could be retained for a while depending on the above factors.

Drainage into what? I'm not sure I follow. Soil compaction generally occurs in the top of the soil horizon, 100-150MM (I remember my soils professor demonstrating this by taking a column of soil in a cylinder and applying pressure- it's easy enough to compact the top of the column, but increasingly difficult as you move down the column as the load is spread into a cumulatively greater volume of pores. The exception to this would be wehn, for instance, you have repeated heavy vehicle traffic over a clay or otherwise unstructured soil, where ruts develop and you end up with deep and stubborn compaction and effective destruction of the topsoil structure. I'd suggest that if you punched holes into any soil and introduced a more porous (relative to the adjacent soil) material, then you'd create a density gradient that the roots would necessarily move into (the path of least resistance). Whether this is evidence of some sort of net beneficial effect, when the possible checking effect of damaging roots is considered, I don't know. Is there any evidence that "deepening the rootzone" is necessarily beneficial either? How would you know that a tree had a "shallow rootzone", and is this a tree defect to be corrected?

Is there any evidence that this works?

Bump- still looking for 2x climbers and/or groundsmen for practical roles with increasing involvement in surveying and consultancy work. All training provided. Ideal for someone looking to make a gradual move from contracting to consultancy while keeping a foot in both camps. Must also like to plant big trees. Just saying.

No worries.

Did you mean this one? http://www.isa-arbor.com/education/resources/educ_TreeHazardForm.pdf

£218!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!???????????????????????

Threes up on the sad front

There are two of these on the Mason's website just now, £5-5.5k

It's a little hard to see from your image, but that does look like a exudation from the bark, rather than simply persistent draining of water from a point of accretion. Are there any cankers or small areas of bark death on the stem? I apreciate this is the wrong time of year, but do you remember what condition the crown of this tree looked like last Autumn?

Methyl bromide is an extremely powerful environemntal pollutant and has been prohibited for horticultural use in the UK since 2009, and fungicides have no effect on bacterial infections. As Dave suggested, above, it's principally a disfiguring infection. You can prune out some affected branches, or live with it. From the extent of the infection in your tree, I'd say it will probably continue to decline, so maybe consider a replacement tree of a different species in the medium to long term.

Fair enough, Paul. I know we've all seen examples of the consultant contractor relationship being blurred, but as Paul B points out above, many other trades /professions have to address this potential issue and can and do deal with it. Out of interest, does the AA have a specific policy on these sort of conflicts of interests within either the regesitered contracor or consultant schemes?

Bit of an interesting tone to your post there, Paul. Most contractors, including a great many AA-approved offer tree surveying or other consultancy services on their websites. Is there anything inherently suspicious about this? Well, the conflict of interest scenario can be dealt with quite easily by being honest, transparent and maintaining long and fruitful relationships with your clients. Not sure why 'advise' is in quotation marks here. We've recently started getting back into contracting on minor works for the simple reason that our clients have asked us to after having to wait too long to have smaller contracts dealt with by third-party contractors. Our clients trust us and know there's no question of any exploitation of interests, weighty pricing or any other 'parenthetical goings-on'. I'd like to think that contractors or consultant who somehow exploit their positions in this respect or 'advise' clients would get found out in due course.

We're currently looking for 2 candidates to work as practical arborists/trainee consultants in North Wales. Based near Llanberis in the Snowdonia National Park, we carry out development site and safety surveys, principally for engineering and infrastructure firms. We have recently begun moving back to a limited degree into arb and landscape contracting, mainly in order to service smaller contracts which we have had chronic difficulty letting reliably. The mix of consultancy to contracting will probably settle down at something like 70/30. We're reluctant to be too prescriptive, but the ideal candidates will have 2-3 years of contracting experience and a level 4+ qualification in arboriculture, some climbing experience and the necessary NPTC/LANTRA units. At a minimum , candidates should have strong tree ID for all UK species, a good understanding of tree biology and plant disorders and at least some knowledge of common plant pathogens. Crucially the candidates should have an interest in developing knowledge of the above. Excellent literacy and numeracy (our experience of interviewing suggests we have to ask), good presentation and positive attitude are non-negotiable requirements. Training in tree safety and BS5837 surveying will be provided, as well as PICUS/Resistograph use, GPS data collection device use, and eventually Autocad and GIS. Please forward CVs with a clear covering email outlining your career aspirations and salary expectations to [email protected]. Closing date for applications is the 7th of March 2014.

I have dealt with Newcastle under Lyme council in the past and have found them extremely problematic to deal with. I would take some professional planning advice to look at this as an urgent matter, ideally before it is confirmed and ideally by a local arborist with experience of dealing with this particular authority. Get the tree consultant to consider both the tree and how it would likely impact any future development. I'd agree with Jules' comment above that it doesn't seem particularly expedient to protect the tree if they feel so confident that the site cannot be developed. Have you appealed any of your refused applications?

I looked up the storm in question following your post Dave- it's a fair point.

I saw a few come down near the office recently in an area where a parking layout had been rearranged and we saw exactly the same thing- trees suffering plat failure along the loine of severnece where a new kernb had gone in or where there had been over-zealous grading off of the old surface.

Look how it failed just inside what looked like a new edge and surface. The new kerb near the camera hardly deflected at all, suggesting the roots were severed during installation of the surfacing. Excellent case study video, in my view. Hope the cyclist was OK- it looked like he still took a bit hit to me.

I'm sure I'm like many others- if a client specifies or asks for it in a contract which I wanted I'd do it. I did the training in 2007, which was delivered by Mike Ellison and was very interesting but since then I've only had one tender which asked for it. The tender in question was put out last year but I didn't go for due to issues with the specification, in my view. QTRA has come in for a bit of a battering in the literature and in conference speeches in the last year or two, some fair, some less so. I admire what Mike's trying to do with it, and I might do the refresher this year because it is an interesting approach and is fairly good value for money, but I'm not sure I'd be out evangelising about it to clients or anything. I's also be interested to hear how the course has changed since I did mine.

Done. If you have any questions, get in touch.

Have the rules changed again or are we seeing the Referee use a bit of common? Russ Think it was the latter. I agree that the stoppages in the tour were infuriating. It might also be the packs getting used to the new arrangements. I notice that the ball still doesn't seem to have to be put into the scrum straight. I thought one of the main reasons for changing the scrum rules, apart from safety concerns, was to force a straight put in and get the hookers to earn their living. Dunno.

We'd PiCUS them for that. Unfortunately our travel to and from Wales would be a million pounds or thereabouts.

The standard encourages us to think of roots as occupying areas when they actually occupy volumes. Paul, in your constrained rooting area example I wonder if the trees would still be vertical on a shallow substrate where they couldn't make up their root protection volume by going down? Dunno.

It states in the standard that it can be drawn as a circle or a square, and this has been the cause of a great deal of pointless debate in planning meetings and appeals over the years. As you can imagine if you superimpose a square and a circle or square of equal value the square variously ducks inside the line of the circle or sticks out beyond it. I've seen many consultants use the square calculation in order to give them a few perceived centimetres of RPA clearance to squeeze in a building. In my view this approach is not only disingenuous and missing the entire point (outlined well above by Jesse) of why we undertake these assessments in the first place. That's not to mention the point that if you rotate the circle by 45 degrees this daft perceived dodge is negated. My approach when we draw these notional RPAs (as we must, unfortunately) is to draw them as circles (since if we're guessing where the RPA is, a fair assessment is that it's equidistant from the stem), trim where there are hard boundaries (walls, buildings but not always surfaces) and aim to "make up" the area trimmed off. You can end up with any sort of strange shape for an RPA if it's strongly constrained. Just think of a tree growing in a narrow central reservation- I've seen these felled and dug up on sites and the roots can run in long narrow extents for massive distances. The RPA calculation and area plotting is already a bit of a fudge, if we're honest. Trying to "fudge a fudge" seems a bit pointless to me, but many try.

Sounds like you need a phase 1 habitat survey. Bear in mind that the the ecologist's industry body is now chartered (Chartered Institute for Ecology and Envirnonmental Management) so it's worth making sure that the ecoloigist you're using is chartered in order to easily pass muster with the LA. Given that you're asking them to look at a woodland, maybe look for someone with particular expereince with bats, ideally as licence holder. Lastly if you're concerned about the qulaity of the work, ask to see an example of their work for a similar site and brief and ask for a firm quotation and set a clear deadline. A competent ecologist probably wouldn't mind providing references, too which might forewarn you about over-zealous and costly specifications. What you want is a thorough but pragmatic person, in my experience.