MONITORING HEALTH OF URBAN TREES

AND FORESTS

Dušan Jurc, Nikica Ogris, Tine Hauptman, Maarten de Groot

Slovenian Forestry Institute, Večna pot 2, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia

Presented at: Urban Forests the Lungs of the City, Final Conference EMoNFUr Project – LIFE+

10ENV/IT/399; Milan, Tuesday, June 17th, 2014

o Evaluation and monitoring of tree health are the necessary first two steps towards the development of efficient methods for the preservation of urban tree and forest health.

o Nowadays, methods used for evaluating tree health and their possible threats, are laborious, time consuming and thus expensive.

o Our goal is to develop a reliable, economically feasible, and user-friendly monitoring method for use in urban tree and forest management.

We compared two methods:

o the first method was performed

following the rules of Intensive

Site Monitoring (ISM) developed

by ICP- Forests (Eichhorn et al.

2010);

ISM inventory requires qualified personnel and has to

use specialised laboratory for the determination of pests

and diseases.

The data are acquired on permanent plots, which are

not visibly marked.

o The second method was developed in frame of

EMoNFUr project, hence Urban Forest Management

Oriented method (UFMO).

The UFMO uses a transect (two meters wide area on each side of the path) on which we collected GPS located and selected data on tree health.

o With the ISM method the following parameters for each tree within the plots were gathered:

o tree species,

o percentage of defoliation,

o affected part of the tree,

o specification of affected part,

o location in crown,

o symptom, specification of symptom,

o causal agents/factors,

o age of damage,

o damage extent, or damage extent of wound on the trunk.

o With the UFMO method the following parameters for each tree which needed management action were recorded:

o tree species,

o diameter at breast height (DBH),

o causal agent/damaging factor,

o GPS location and

o GPS track.

For overall picture in the urban forest health problems also other biotic and abiotic damaging factors were recorded.

Both methods were carried out during July and August 2013 on the same area of the urban forest Rožnik in Ljubljana.

Data analysis Comparison of the two methods for:

• Performance,

• number of damaging agents determined,

• number of trees assessed,

• relevant dead trees recorded,

• number of management options given.

Performance measure ISM UFMO

area (are) 92.0 518.1

time (minutes) 1,640 1,700

time/area (minutes/are) 17.8 3.28

damaging agents 40 62

trees 260 730

dead trees, relevant* 13 181

management options* 101 730

Table 1: Performance comparison between ISM and UFMO method

Comment:

relevant dead trees are standing

dead trees near walking paths;

management options were

categories of sanitary felling,

pruning, thinning, felling and other

sylviculture measures.

Table 2: Most frequent tree health indicators (first 15)

ISM UFMO

Lophodermium piceae 46* dead branches 187*

Diplodia pinea 42 dead tree 163

Dryocosmus kuriphilus 33 Cryphonectria parasitica 123

Lophodermium spp. 29 sylviculture 58

Cryphonectria parasitica 23 mechanical damage 56

Rhynchaenus quercus 17 weakening 25

light deficiency 15 Chalara fraxinea 25

Microsphaera alphitoides 15 snowpacking 18

defoliators 11 Erysiphe alphitoides 17

Apiognomonia spp. 11 leaning 16

drought 9 cold crack 15

Tomicus minor 9 Rhytisma acerinum 14

Tomicus piniperda 8 windthrow 14

Rhynchaenus fagi 8 Lophodermium spp. 13

Diplodia pinea 13

*Frequency of trees

Conclusions

• Large differences in output between the ISM and UFMO method

• ISM method was better for registering defoliators

• UFMO method more other tree health issues

• UFMO method was a better method for detecting the tree health issues needing management measures

Thank

you