Thermal imaging

Hi guys,

Just wondered if people had used or seen results from thermal imaging equipment in detecting internal decay in trees.

It seems a quick and cheaper way of assessing trees than say the picus tomograph but do you guys feel the results are as good?

Interesting one this in some ways...the company that rents out the cameras do not mention in the promotional write up that it has/ can be used in relation to tree work and decay detection...Interestlingly also, the manufacturers seem not to mention this application when I last checked (March ish this year.....). Perhaps this is an oversight and nothing more. It was reviewed earlier this year in "Treeline " if memory serves.

I have heard that thet are not very accurate...but with no personal experience....

Hi ya mister Tee

Yes i observed it in action a few weeks ago & the information gathering is very quick, A picture paints a thousand words, quite how easy it is to deceiver the information into a report format , alas I cant say !

but I liked it, Very much !! drool

surely this could be affected by weather conditions such as wind direction, and where the sun is etc. It sounds good in theory, but i wouldnt want to gaurentee the safety of a tree on info gathered in this way, unless it had been well proven.

Kev

from what I was told it takes into consideration local climate conditions & uses that as a base level

wind doesnt play a role as far as im aware as it measures dysfuction in relation to live wood

would be interesting to see it in use....

I am assuming that the more it is used, the more the software is tweaked to improve accuracy etc.

Yorkshireman - was the pictorial result pretty confusing then? Sounds like a lot of training is needed to accurately interpret the readings?

Though I confess I haven't seen it in action, I have heard generally bad reviews.

The main complaints are that weather does indeed affect the results. Sunshine on one side of the tree will throw the data. I'm not aware of any software(?) that is used to interpret the images.

The second complaint is that the interpretation is fairly post hoc ergo hoc, i.e., after this, the because of this... Temperature differences on the images seem to be used to confirm VTA defects that are already visible. Very little data has been presented to show correlation between temp diffs and decay extents.

One to watch though. There could be some merit in it...

A chap I know saw it bein demo'ed and apparently people were winding up the presenters by placing their hands on the trees before the images were taken, giving Global Hypercolour type handprints!!!

Apologies to any of you looking up the article in Treeline...you wont find it there but in Tree News ( Issue 14 )

I was at Woburn Abbey a few weeks back, where Marcus Bellet Travers demo'd the Thermal Imaging Camera.

I have also read a report which uses the results of the imager from an avenue of Chestnuts (on my doorstep) to assist in the management proposal to fell a third of those trees.

From memory, I believe the readings are really only capable of being interpreted by people with extensive knowledge and experience.

Also I seem to recall that the equipment is actually used to ascertain how healthy and sound a given tree is not how decayed/disfunctional it is.

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