Acer ventura

This tree risk assessment review article by Peter Gray, from the Summer 2020 issue of Arboriculture Australia's 'The Bark', might be of interest to you. It can be downloaded from the News page of VALID's website here. https://tinyurl.com/y2xxbjeb

This makes for an interesting tree risk assessment case study. A TRAQ, QTRA, and VALID tree risk assessment were carried out on the same Pine trees in Western Springs, Auckland | NZ. It involves around 200 Pinus radiata. From a risk of branch or tree failure perspective, the trees of particular interest are those that could fall onto a footpath or property. The reports can be downloaded from the News page of VALID’s website here; Tree Risk Assessment Reports TRAQ | August 2019 Risk Ratings 1 Extreme 1 High – Extreme 7 High 1 Medium-High 36 Medium 23 Low-Medium 148 Low QTRA | December 2019 Risk of Harm for 15 trees is Tolerable (they’re ALARP) 4 1/30,000 7 1/300,000 1 1/500,000 2 <1/1,000,000 Random tree part or tree onto footpath 1/400,000 (Size Range 4) 1/500,000 (Size Range 3) 1/1,000,000 (Size Range 2) <1/1,000,000 (Size Range1) VALID | October 2020 Risk 1 Not Acceptable 50 Not Tolerable 6 Tolerable 141 Acceptable Cheers Acer Ventura

I don't doubt the decay's been active before it fruited, but why put such an accurate figure on it? It could've been decades, or a very short time because a volume of wood was rapidly rendered dysfunctional by a pruning event, limb loss, or root severance. As the only way we can comfortably age a fungal bracket, outside of quite a wide range, is to know when it first fruited, there's much more uncertainty about how long the fungus has been at work. Particularly, as it may have had a long nap during its life. Also, if you take your eyes of the prize, you'll see the fungal bracket's on a log.?

Summer Branch Drop Guide - Update As we’re going through a hot spell in the UK at the moment, it’s time to release v4.0 of the Summer Branch Drop Guide. Those of you who are concerned about the risk, this should help reassure you. The overall risk from SBD is mind-bogglingly low. In this update, we have an easy to grasp explanation of what mind-bogglingly low means. The overall risk from SBD for a whole year is the equivalent of the few minutes it takes to cover about 2 miles (3km) on a drive. 200 miles (320km) drive = 1 micromort (a one in a million chance of death). The overall risk from SBD is over one hundred times lower than this. If you’re a duty holder, unless you’ve got a tree that’s a repeat offender, there’s no need to fanny around with confusing and ineffectual warning signs. Just download the SBD Guide from the Government section on the Risk Management page of the website. https://tinyurl.com/y679ucl4

How'd you get those very accurate figures Khriss???

How old is this fungal bracket? One, two, five years old? I posted some of this in a reply on the Arbcology Facebook page, and thought it might be worth sharing it on here. It’s from an article I’m writing about what appears to be rotten at the roots of the expert evidence the court had to work with in a UK court Judgment known as Cavanagh v Witley Parish Council. ….. You can't count pore tube layers, like the candles on a birthday cake, to accurately age a fungal bracket. Perennial fungal brackets don't grow like trees that produce an annual ring each year. They often produce a new layer of pore tubes with each growth spurt. This can happen once, twice, maybe several times a year. Some years there's no growth. Other years there's growth but just the darker brown flesh and no pore tube layer. Those of you who may have heard anecdotal evidence that you can age fungal brackets like this, don't take my word for it. We can ask someone who's an internationally renowned mycologist with particular expertise in decay fungi. “Layers of pores/tubes on perennial brackets of fungi cannot be reliably used to judge age, because there is not necessarily just one new set per year. There could be several, or perhaps even no new pores” Professor Lynne Boddy, Cardiff University ..... Photo credit - David Humphries

Hi Khriss I saw and shared the dashcam footage on LinkedIn and Facebook yesterday. There have been some interesting responses. Here's my take on it with VALID's Tree Risk-Benefit Management Strategy. It's based on the dashcam footage and Google street view images. So it's made with those limitations. This a 'Very High' level of occupancy (on average more than one person. Or more than one vehicle. Or more than person and more than one vehicle). It would've been managed by Active and Passive Assessment. There are three levels of Active Assessment. Basic, Detailed, and Advanced. If you want more details, there here in the Government section. https://tinyurl.com/y679ucl4 Passive Assessment - Risk is Acceptable If you walked or drove past this tree, there's no obvious tree risk feature to trigger taking a closer look. Basic Assessment - Risk is Acceptable On foot. There are no obvious tree risk features. It looks there has been no recent major infrastructure work within the structural root zone to warrant any concern (weirdly, I know this location well). I can't see a trigger to go beyond a Basic Assessment to a Detailed level. Detailed Assessment - Risk is Acceptable From what I can see in the video, I'm not sure a Detailed Assessment, with a sounding hammer, would've revealed the extent of decay in the roots. There's some uncertainty about this, but the buttressing looks like it's nicely developed for a tree of this size, age, and management history. Advanced Assessment - Risk is Not Acceptable I think only an Advanced Assessment, involving a Static Load Test, would've established that the tree had a Safety Factor of less than 1.0. But I can't see a trigger to reasonably justify this. It wasn't THAT windy on Sunday in South Ealing. I wonder whether primary failure happened with the storms we had earlier (or last year), and it's only as the tree's come into full foliage, 4 years (?) into its pollard cycle, that the moderate wind load intercepted by the canopy hit the critical point. It now presents an interesting problem for the council. That paving specification at pedestrian crossings might be of concern given how long ago it was done and the root system resembles that of spring onion. Of course, it could be a 'black swan'. Generally, the chances of regularly pollarded London Plane, with no obvious tree risk features, and no obvious recent root damage, falling are incredibly low.

The Elephant in the Tree Why do elephants paint their toenails red? It turns out elephants don’t need to paint their toenails red to hide in Cherry trees. A hanging branch is so ‘f’ing obvious’, I didn’t include it in the original Obvious Tree Risk Defects* Guide. It's been coming for a while, and I’m now persuaded too many civilians don’t look up and see the elephant in the tree. Looking up is an Arborist and Urban Forester thing. The final nudge came from Rick Milsom (a UK Tree Officer) who shared a tale of a picnicking couple in his patch. Of all the places they could picnic in a park, they chose to do it under a 6m long broken branch on an Ash tree that was hanging on by the skin of its teeth. If they stood up, the tip of the branch was just above their heads. So, I’ve updated the Obvious Tree Risk Features Guide (v3.2) to include hanging branches. It's released under a creative commons license so you're welcome to use and share and it. I’ll sort out fitting it into the strategies this week. https://tinyurl.com/y679ucl4 * 'Defects', in the original, has been upgraded to 'Risk Features' PS I've updated some of the wording as well.

Unfortunately, it’s not been possible to navigate the UK government’s road map out of lockdown with much confidence, and we’ve had to push back the Summer tree risk training workshops to Autumn. Here are the revised dates and venues. Here's a link to the Training page of the website. Tree Risk-Benefit Assessment & Tree Risk Management Training | VALID LNKD.IN An elegantly simple solution to a complex problem - all in the palm of your hand! ..... A Money-Back Guarantee VALID is such a momentous and far-reaching improvement in the field of tree risk that it comes with a money-back guarantee. If, after training, you go back to how you used to assess and manage tree risk, we'll refund you the fee. Yes, it's that much of a game-changer.

You have my sympathy. The thread’s opening post is about a free, easy to understand strategy for Homeowners to manage their tree risk. There’s no App involved. I figured the best fit for this subject was in the General Chat group. After some interesting exchanges with Andrew, the thread was then trolled by my weird little obsessive stalker with a couple of shameless and bare-faced lies. I decided I shouldn't let that deliberate effort at smearing by deceit go unchallenged and it’s now gone off-topic. I’ll see whether the moderators can kill it and and do some tidying up, so the content resembles the title. Just to clarify. You can’t use the App to survey trees at a ‘Basic’ level. Neither is it necessary. You only use it if you need to take a closer look and increase the level assessment to a ‘Detailed’ level because you’ve spotted an obvious tree risk feature, and the risk might not be Acceptable or Tolerable. This is a trained Arborist thing, and not something for the Homeowner.

I when I'm asked to quote for tree risk assessments, and clients baulk at the price, I tell them that they can get a free tree assessment and advice from some tree businesses. I then caution them that the advice will seldom come without some tree work being recommend ?. To be fair, most tree work has little to do with risk management. A quick word of caution. I'd strongly advise not using the 'safe' word. I've written a short piece explaining why here. Is it safe? WWW.LINKEDIN.COM In this famous scene from The Marathon Man, Laurence Olivier finds himself in the uncommon position of being a...

Wow! You’re either being deliberately obtuse or alarmingly ignorant about what those QTRA 'Advisory Risk Thresholds' mean. If the latter. Then, as someone who was one of the main QTRA trainers for 10 years, and drove its development to v5.0, I’d strongly advise, at the very least, you familiarise yourself with the QTRA User Manual. It might also be worthwhile considering some update training.

Hi Jcarbor I appreciate the sentiment. Though, funnily enough, back then Julian was 'bitching' about QTRA on a Q&A thread I ran on here, when I was part of QTRA! He's now a self-appointed QTRA Brownshirt 'bitching' about VALID because I thought things could be done so much better and moved on to put VALID together in 2016, just as he joined QTRA. His unhinged Pepe le Pew pursuit of me across social media, no matter my approach to tree risk, makes me wonder whether it's because he's secretly got the hots for me and is wrestling with some deep repressed denial. Cheers

When you were frothing at the mouth and trolling me from the peanut gallery about this on the UKTC last year, the way I replied then was to say, replace VALID with the QTRA (where your self-interests lie) in your question. You wilfully ignored it then, and continue to do so. Replace VALID CIC’s ‘strategies’ with QTRA Ltd’s ‘risk thresholds’, and your increasingly desperate and hypocritical efforts at bad-mouthing VALID's approach to tree risk, compared to the one you’ve invested in (QTRA) becomes again, all too transparent.

Sorry, just picked up a bookmark error. 3 4 in the grab was incorrectly numbered 4 5. It's fixed now. Tree Risk Assessment & Tree Risk Management | News WWW.VALIDTREERISK.COM An elegantly simple solution to a complex problem - all in the palm of your hand!

It's difficult to imagine a place where the trees are, or have been, more regularly assessed.

Or is it Sudden Limb Drop? Or Sudden Branch Drop? I've updated this as a stand-alone document that can be used by any tree owner or manager outside of VALID's 'strategies'. It can be downloaded from the News Page here. Tree Risk Assessment & Tree Risk Management | News WWW.VALIDTREERISK.COM An elegantly simple solution to a complex problem - all in the palm of your hand! Here's the context. Arguably, the issue of managing Summer Branch Drop started to became a risk management thing in the UK after the Coroner's Inquest into the death of Erena Wilson. She tragically died in Kew Gardens and it was claimed the cause of her death was Summer Branch Drop. The Coroner’s verdict is that it was an accidental death. Woman killed by falling branch at Kew Gardens died accidentally, jury rules | UK news | The Guardian WWW.THEGUARDIAN.COM Botanical garden's tree inspections called a 'shambles' in court but coroner says Erena Wilson's death was 'ghastly... We then had a very dry summer in 2018, and Jeremy Barrell released a ‘Briefing Note on UK Summer Branch Drop’. https://lnkd.in/g8NpsbN VALID was just getting going at the time, and we were contacted by many concerned Arborists and duty holders who saw the Briefing Note as a ticking time bomb. This SBD Tree Risk-Management Guide was put together to help duty holders take a common sense approach and diffuse it.

I've been told that I shouldn't get involved in this kind of thing, but I think if it's let go without challenge some of the mud sticks.

Sorry, 'with' should be 'without'

With apologies to everyone else. For the public record I'm going to deal with just a few points in this, as briefly as I can. Given that your first post in this thread was insults and aggression,. Clearly, what you’re doing here is called ‘projection’. Your history on here, when I first encountered you in 2013, and on the UKTC when you migrated over there later, shows you're incredibly uncomfortable with anyone daring to disagree with you. It makes me wonder whether you’ve got a history of coercive control and gaslighting elsewhere. Your fact-lite, off-topic, insults have merely escalated from your first post. Including the weirdly affected ‘Mr Evans’. That rather sounds like you’ve found a barrister’s wig in your dressing up box, and might be an alarming window into your staggering sense of self-importance. Anyone can check my postings on here (and this thread) where I'm not dealing with your ravings and vested interests, and form their own opinion. Oh, dear me. You do like to wear your ignorance on your sleeve and then shout out loud about it, don't you. As I'm sure you can imagine, with your legal action nonsense later, this made me snort with laughter. Blimey, are you so deluded you genuinely think you represent everyone? I take it everyone includes these people? Tree Risk-Benefit Assessment & Tree Risk Management Training | VALID TINYURL.COM An elegantly simple solution to a complex problem - all in the palm of your hand! Really? Isn't this just you playing dress up with wiggy and being a blowhard again? I've not heard anything more about this since your unhinged rant threatening it on the UKTC some months ago. See above. Please don't try to pass it off as a thing outside of your head on here. The accusation is even funnier in light of your public 'QTRA knock off' claim above. BTW I'm not blocked from the UKTC, but again, why let facts get in the way of your weird campaign. The first part is self-evidently untrue, as I've demonstrated but you've ignored again. As for the second part, VALID is a registered not-for-profit Community Interest Company. As 'hilarious' as that might be to someone who runs a commercial company to make profit, and is the self-elected attack dog of the QTRA for profit tree risk assessment system. It's another one of those pesky fact things that seem to infuriate you. It's pretty self-evident that if a Homeowner downloads VALID's Homeowner's Tree RIsk-Benefit Management Strategy, or an Arborist does, and uses is, then in the extraordinarily unlikely case of claim being made, the Claimant will also be looking at whether a claim can be made against VALID CIC as well. Helpfully, the address of VALID's website is hyperlinked in the footer of each page. I guess it'd be the same with the NTSG if anyone followed their Chapter 5, 'How this guidance could be applied'. The risk of either happening is Acceptable. This, complete lack of self-awareness at the end, is just too funny.

Why? Otherwise, you’re imposing a greater duty of care on a Homeowner than you are on a State Government. Generally, it’s the other way around. Just to clarify that’s part of the Plan, not the Policy. I’m not being a pedant, the distinction is important. Hey, no problem with registering concern and putting an alternative take on it. I’m very much aware that it challenges a lot of preconceived and accepted practices. But when you look at it closely, the practice of removing all vegetation to access the lower 2m of a tree to try to find hidden defects without obvious tree risk features to justify it, but not trying to find hidden defects elsewhere doesn’t stack up. Not least because it’s disproportionate to the overall level of extremely low risk. This point is laid out in the Policy, which is why it’s so important. To quote someone who is way smarter than me on the subject of risk. "…the prospects of reducing the risk from tree failure below the current level are remote and comparable to finding a microscopic needle in a gargantuan haystack." Public Safety and Risk Assessment (2011), Professor David Ball, Centre for Decision Analysis and Risk Management It’s not a cop-out. The duty holder is the decision-maker. They’re responsible for the management decisions. The NTSG and ISO 31000 is really clear on this. One of the problems that the duty holder is faced with is Arborists going beyond risk assessment decision-making into risk management decision-making. They’re not trained to do this. I’m not sure you’ve grasped the importance of those traffic light coded risks in the Policy that you’re mocking in favour of inspection training. They’re obvious tree risk features to you, and a good reason to want to have a closer look. They’re not obvious to a Homeowner though. If Homeowner is worried, for whatever reason, and they call you in and you gave these reasons to want to have a closer look, then I really have no problem with that. If, on the other hand, you were to routinely say that with any obvious tree risk features you wanted to see whether there were any hidden defects in the lower 2 m of a tree, but not the other parts, and said they had to remove the vegetation themselves or pay you to do it, then from a risk-benefit management point of view, I think we have a problem.

I was wondering when you’d continue your disturbing pursuit of me as a self-appointed QTRA Brownshirt. Ironic that it’s on here, where your single white male obsession was first kindled in 2013 because I was part of QTRA back then, and you were boasting your superior home-knitted system to quantify tree risk. If you’d bothered to read the post and the strategy before frothing at the mouth, you’d see it’s for the Homeowner. There’s no scope to use the App. It’s not even mentioned. If a Homeowner sees an obvious tree risk feature they ring an Arborist. It doesn’t even say ring a Tree Risk Validator.

I forgot to mention that I screwed up the pdf compilation when first I posted this. When combining the files I imported the wrong Plan, which had some grammatical errors and manglish in it. This is fixed now and it can be downloaded here. Tree Risk-Benefit Management Strategy, Policy & Plan | VALID TINYURL.COM An elegantly simple solution to a complex problem - all in the palm of your hand!

Sorry, for the delay in replying. I didn’t get an alert for your post. Here’s some additional thoughts. Not to spend time, money, and take away habitat benefits by removing climbing plants, undergrowth, basal growth, or cutting hedgerows unless there’s an obvious tree risk feature is a risk-benefit management decision. Not an assessment decision. It’s about the duty holder managing the primary risk, which is the risk from tree failure. We know this is an extremely low risk. So extremely low, almost everything we do each day carries a higher risk than being hit by a tree. To remove vegetation without an obvious tree risk feature to trigger it is disproportionate to the likely overall risk reduction. This becomes particularly important when it scales up to a Landowner or Government Agency. At the moment I’m doing some work with the Tasmanian Government on managing tree risk on their main roads. The prospects of removing any vegetation at the base of trees within falling distance of their main roads are mind-boggling. Often, the surveying/inspection decision to remove this stuff by an Arborist is about them managing the secondary risk, which are the chances of negligence claim being made against them, irrespective of the actual primary risk. That section you’re not keen on is something that’s not an assessor’s decision. They’re making their risk assessment within those limitations set in the Homeowner’s strategy. Just as you’ll be saying a tree has an Acceptable risk from branch failure without climbing the tree, you’re extending this to say the tree has Acceptable level of risk of failure based on what you can see. Out of interest, do you specify removing all Ivy, rhododendron, bramble, hedgerows, laurel, shrubs, epicormics, etc as a matter of course to look closer, no matter the condition of the tree? You say easy and low cost. What’s your boundary between easy and hard, and low cost v high cost, and how have you worked out that your boundary is the right side of disproportionate? For one tree in a garden it might be easy to remove, but what about 50? Or if the owner likes the ivy. Or it’s their shrubs that are screening their garden. I don’t have a problem with an assessor saying to the duty holder, “You might want to consider severing that ivy at the base”, but it’s the duty holder’s choice. You’re right about the language, though I’m not sure it’s rebranding. It’s being really clear about what is risk assessment and what is risk management . It’s also not about a ‘survey’ or ‘inspection’. You may have noticed, I don’t use words like ‘survey’ or ‘inspection’. These words are loaded with expectations driven by qualification and training. It’s probably a separate thread to chat about what we’re doing when we ‘inspect trees’. For example, as I understand it during the 3 day PTI course you don’t assess the risk, which I find odd. Why inspect a tree in so much detail and not have a risk output? I think one of the reasons why some Arborists feel uncomfortable not removing vegetation is because that’s what’s been told in the past. That you have to inspect the lower 2 m of a tree in detail to try and find hidden defects, but the rest, not so much. ‘tree safety policy’ Following on from above, I’m not being a pendant here. The wording is really important. The ‘safety’ word isn’t used in any of the strategies. You can’t make trees safe. Not least because most people think safe means a complete absence of risk.

I appreciate your suggestion and discussion. It's really useful to debate this kind of thing. Perhaps this explains it better. The risk feature needs to be ‘obvious’ to warrant taking a closer look. Not removing other vegetation without an obvious tree risk feature (like dieback) has the same logic to it as to why you don’t climb every tree to look at the top of a branch to establish there’s no tree risk feature up there. You wouldn’t recommend a climbing inspection of a tree unless there was some ‘obvious’ feature to warrant doing it. Similarly, you don’t carry out a root excavation to establish there are no tree risk features in the roots either, unless there’s a trigger. You’re not looking for hidden features, otherwise, where do you stop. Something hidden by undergrowth, on the upper side of a branch, or beneath ground isn’t ‘obvious’ unless there’s a trigger pointing you to it. Actually, the plan is to eventually capture stats on this with an App. However, the key thing about this short strategy is it’s the Homeowner managing tree risk in a reasonable, proportionate, and reasonably practicable way. It’s not necessary for them to VTA a tree, and that in itself opens up separate can of worms. They’re not ‘actively’ looking for obvious tree risk features. They ‘can’t help but notice them’. It’s called Passive Assessment, as opposed to Active Assessment, and these levels of assessment are explained further in the strategies for Government Agencies and Landowners. In short, if you’re paid to look at a tree, that’s Active Assessment. If you’re driving home on a Friday evening, with a case of cold beer, and pass one of your clients’ trees that’s so fecked you momentarily take your eyes off the road, that’s Passive Assessment. That last Obvious Tree Risk Features Guide page can be used by itself, and there’s a link to download a standalone version on the website. However, if you’re a Homeowner, and your tree fails and kills, injures, someone or damages their property and there's a legal claim made against you, then it’s the Policy and Plan (mainly the Policy) that are the pillars of your defence.