And they came tumbling down: Stability of infested ash trees
John Ball, Forest Health Specialist, South Dakota State University
Author
04/10/2017
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857
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Description
What happens if we don’t remove trees killed by emerald ash borer? Unlike
cottonwoods and other trees that may stand for decades after dying, ashes killed by emerald ash borer soon become unstable and brittle. This means that
communities must take prompt action to remove emerald ash borer killed trees
before the trees become a hazard to people and property. This session will cover
the management of these dead trees.
Searchable Transcript
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- [00:00:00.501]Alright, well, I get the after lunch crowd.
- [00:00:03.956]And you're not gonna see gooey pictures for two reasons.
- [00:00:06.552]One, this is a general audience,
- [00:00:08.999]so you don't need to see all the goo,
- [00:00:10.866]plus you just had a lunch of lasagna and pizza,
- [00:00:14.143]and that doesn't go well with goo.
- [00:00:15.931]But, you know what, it's still kinda gets
- [00:00:17.800]to the heart of my talk here.
- [00:00:19.381]So what we're gonna do is we're gonna talk about
- [00:00:21.866]what happens to these trees,
- [00:00:23.741]and some of the speakers this morning mentioned it,
- [00:00:25.771]and I'll kinda add to it,
- [00:00:27.810]is what happens if you let 'em stand.
- [00:00:30.705]And I'm gonna go on a little bit bit of the why
- [00:00:32.881]the ash act the way they do,
- [00:00:35.530]and then after my talk, cos after this,
- [00:00:39.060]you had a nice lunch, we turned the lights down,
- [00:00:41.858]you're getting a little sleepy,
- [00:00:43.143]we're gonna get you outside in the sun
- [00:00:45.264]and go out there and take a look at the different
- [00:00:47.588]treatment possibilities out there
- [00:00:49.625]as well as discuss a little bit more about
- [00:00:52.697]how the beetle and tree interacts and
- [00:00:54.569]then do that for a couple of hours,
- [00:00:56.767]let you photosynthesize, bring you back here
- [00:00:59.148]and we'll do a wrap up, so things are going well here.
- [00:01:02.067]Alright here, well!
- [00:01:03.727]You know what, here's the interesting thing is that,
- [00:01:06.284]for any arborists here, if you've ever heard
- [00:01:08.643]any of my talks or anybody else's,
- [00:01:11.341]we always talked about electricity being
- [00:01:14.050]the number one killer of arborists, electrocution was it,
- [00:01:17.778]number one.
- [00:01:18.772]It's still a big one, don't get me wrong.
- [00:01:20.180]And it has not gone down.
- [00:01:23.409]Really what's gone up is being struck by,
- [00:01:26.866]so now that's the number one.
- [00:01:28.862]Being struck by a falling tree.
- [00:01:32.919]And when people say how'd that get to be number one, why?
- [00:01:36.603]About 50 million ash trees have had to be removed.
- [00:01:41.322]And they don't behave like normal trees,
- [00:01:44.573]and so we're seeing a bump if you will,
- [00:01:48.432]in the fact that we're now out there removing trees
- [00:01:51.611]that are extremely hazardous, and by we
- [00:01:54.157]I'm using a rather broad we.
- [00:01:57.641]We only track injuries for arborists.
- [00:02:03.298]Our definition of arborist is anybody being paid
- [00:02:05.128]to take a tree down.
- [00:02:07.036]So, you're not an ISAY member necessarily,
- [00:02:10.217]you're not a company with TCI,
- [00:02:12.325]but somebody's paying you to take down the tree,
- [00:02:15.030]so we can say you're tree work.
- [00:02:16.442]If you're like a homeowners, they're crazy anyway,
- [00:02:20.548]trying to take trees down, but nevertheless,
- [00:02:22.545]taking down these trees has not been easy
- [00:02:25.041]because they behave a little bit differently
- [00:02:27.574]than you normally do.
- [00:02:29.023]They fall in ways that you don't expect.
- [00:02:31.966]They are, to sum it up, unpredictable.
- [00:02:35.664]Unpredictable means sometimes they fall normally!
- [00:02:39.660]So it doesn't mean everything's gonna be
- [00:02:41.413]kind of bizarre, but you have to be aware
- [00:02:43.195]for the whole possibilities for bringing
- [00:02:45.550]these trees down.
- [00:02:46.752]Yeah, there's a guy getting paid to take down a tree.
- [00:02:49.971]Yeah, I know, no helmet, and all that too.
- [00:02:52.589]We're getting lots of people saying hey, you know what,
- [00:02:55.501]there's a lot of trees to be taken down,
- [00:02:58.657]this looks like a good way to make money,
- [00:03:01.115]and we're gonna get fly-by-nighters.
- [00:03:02.692]We're gonna have to watch that sort of thing.
- [00:03:04.559]When I was in business, we saw it every ice storm.
- [00:03:07.923]They would say, wow, this looks like an easy way
- [00:03:09.791]to make some money!
- [00:03:11.114]I'll go out and take down trees!
- [00:03:13.002]No, that's really when you wanna leave it
- [00:03:15.337]to the people that know what they're doing
- [00:03:17.350]and have the equipment to do it properly.
- [00:03:21.136]Oh, now there's my favorite EAB tree.
- [00:03:24.673]Absolutely my favorite.
- [00:03:26.627]I like trees, I'm not a big fan of people
- [00:03:29.163]to be quite honest with ya,
- [00:03:31.564]I don't remember people very much
- [00:03:33.187]because most people are not important to me.
- [00:03:35.631]But I do remember trees, so I have my priorities set.
- [00:03:39.488]And, I walk by that tree, that tree's in (mumbles) Michigan
- [00:03:42.780]we were doing a survey.
- [00:03:44.154]I looked at that tree and go, oh yeah,
- [00:03:45.461]I remember that tree, 1972, I remember that tree.
- [00:03:50.498]And reason why is because I was working
- [00:03:51.992]at Wedel's Garden Center.
- [00:03:54.398]And the people who bought this tree,
- [00:03:57.393]and then they were kind of surprised,
- [00:03:58.596]so they called the company and said, hey,
- [00:04:01.264]could someone come out and look at our tree.
- [00:04:02.419]And I came out and looked at their tree,
- [00:04:03.706]and they said, you know, we're really surprised
- [00:04:05.252]at our tree here because it doesn't have
- [00:04:07.205]that nice white flowers or those little red berries
- [00:04:09.149]we expected.
- [00:04:11.351]Oh, you wanted a mountain ash, yeah.
- [00:04:16.580]Now, this is a green ash.
- [00:04:18.576]But I said, you know what?
- [00:04:20.492]You're gonna be a lot happier with this, alright?
- [00:04:23.354]Because mountain ash doesn't live that long.
- [00:04:25.312]Green ash'll live for a century or more!
- [00:04:27.978]Oh yeah, let's just keep walking.
- [00:04:29.813]Alright, so anyway.
- [00:04:31.479]You all know they tend to fade but boy,
- [00:04:33.924]the last couples biggest set right,
- [00:04:36.377]we went from elm-lined streets!
- [00:04:40.427]We cut all those down, and then started planting ash,
- [00:04:44.709]and what do we end up with?
- [00:04:45.750]Ash-lined streets.
- [00:04:47.545]Now my big concern, you can see it on the inventory there
- [00:04:50.662]is what do we get now people
- [00:04:52.443]are getting maple-lined streets?
- [00:04:54.843]Freeman maples.
- [00:04:57.014]We gotta ban the planting of Freeman maples.
- [00:05:00.156]Just say no to Freeman maples.
- [00:05:03.522]Because you go, by the way, what don't you like
- [00:05:05.930]about Freeman maples?
- [00:05:06.938]I don't like 'em because everybody's planting 'em.
- [00:05:08.309]I like the tree, don't get me wrong.
- [00:05:10.760]But, as one of the speakers mentioned,
- [00:05:12.960]I'm at 5% of your community trees being in one genus,
- [00:05:17.410]that's a pretty tough bar to hit.
- [00:05:21.027]But, keep in mind that only 5% of your trees were ash,
- [00:05:24.430]would EAB be that much of an issue?
- [00:05:27.107]Yeah, it would be a concern, but so what?
- [00:05:29.923]Alright, but no, it's about a third of our trees are ash.
- [00:05:34.072]And people get the message, they're not planting ash
- [00:05:36.028]anymore, but you know what they're planting?
- [00:05:37.735]They're planting maples left and right,
- [00:05:39.191]left and right, left and right,
- [00:05:40.486]we need to diversify, we need to diversify,
- [00:05:42.475]I'm not worried about Asian longhorns.
- [00:05:44.827]That you can manage.
- [00:05:45.861]What I'm worried about is some insect
- [00:05:47.056]we don't even know about yet.
- [00:05:49.836]That's over in China, eating away on dying maple tree.
- [00:05:53.581]You realize China has more species of maple than we do?
- [00:05:58.984]There's gotta be something over there,
- [00:06:00.435]finishing off dying maple trees.
- [00:06:02.741]And it's gonna end up in this country, sooner or later,
- [00:06:04.984]unless we stop international trade.
- [00:06:07.277]And then 20 years from now we're all gonna be sitting
- [00:06:09.479]at a table like this, or holograms or something like that,
- [00:06:11.821]we're gonna say, why'd we plant all those maples?!
- [00:06:15.777]So, get off it, quit planting maples for a while, alright?
- [00:06:20.145]Find something else to plant.
- [00:06:21.423]Coffee trees, for one, I like them.
- [00:06:23.665]Alright, but it's kind of deja vu all over again.
- [00:06:26.090]We just don't seem to learn from our mistakes.
- [00:06:28.797]And community response to EAB is this.
- [00:06:31.527]First of all, lalalalalala don't wanna hear about it,
- [00:06:34.969]don't wanna talk about it, don't wanna know about it,
- [00:06:36.584]don't bother me about EAB.
- [00:06:37.909]And of course then you find it
- [00:06:40.147]and then the sky is falling.
- [00:06:42.237]Alright, the world is coming to an end as you know it.
- [00:06:44.900]And so we gotta get communities to be
- [00:06:46.763]a little bit more proactive, and I certainly appreciate
- [00:06:49.157]this forum in helping us do that.
- [00:06:51.848]But let's talk a little bit about this insect,
- [00:06:56.305]and the tree, and it is an agrilus insect.
- [00:06:59.758]Agrilus is a genus that we already have native members to.
- [00:07:04.319]Bronze birch borer is native to North America.
- [00:07:07.768]We have a hackberry borer that's
- [00:07:09.873]agrilus native to North America.
- [00:07:11.166]We have two agrilus that attack honey locus.
- [00:07:14.897]Native insects attacking native trees,
- [00:07:16.933]doing what they're supposed to do,
- [00:07:18.604]preparing the dying for death.
- [00:07:21.719]That's what they do.
- [00:07:23.295]Bronze birch borer does not attack health birch trees.
- [00:07:26.919]It attacks dying birch trees.
- [00:07:29.200]It's nature's recycler.
- [00:07:31.321]Now you might say, well wait a minute,
- [00:07:33.653]that birch looked healthy to me, it didn't to it.
- [00:07:37.675]And back 30, 40 years ago when I was doing work on this,
- [00:07:40.570]we were measuring stress in birch before we
- [00:07:43.313]could even see any change in the birch tree.
- [00:07:45.711]It was there, we could detect it.
- [00:07:49.987]And you know what, the bronze birch borer knew it too.
- [00:07:52.562]And so it would start attacking those trees.
- [00:07:54.760]The same with EAB.
- [00:07:57.455]It loves stressed trees.
- [00:08:00.235]And of course, by definition,
- [00:08:01.896]if you're a tree in Nebraska, you are stressed.
- [00:08:06.058]Alright?
- [00:08:07.353]That makes pretty good fodder.
- [00:08:08.587]Now, the difference is, since this is an exotic insect
- [00:08:12.571]attacking native trees, our trees really don't have
- [00:08:15.105]any of the natural defenses against it.
- [00:08:17.892]And so it can also successfully attack
- [00:08:19.846]perfectly healthy trees as well.
- [00:08:22.915]But, generally for our native agrilus,
- [00:08:24.941]the rule is, if they're attacking a tree,
- [00:08:27.679]the problem is something else.
- [00:08:30.383]It's not the fact that they're attacking,
- [00:08:32.453]there's something else going on.
- [00:08:35.703]Well there is our little Asian, our little EAB out there,
- [00:08:39.772]the typical bell-shaped segments.
- [00:08:41.885]All the agrilus look pretty close together,
- [00:08:44.174]they only differ in hosts.
- [00:08:46.365]But you know what's kind of interesting is
- [00:08:47.694]look at the galleries they make?
- [00:08:50.232]You can get an idea how healthy that tree is
- [00:08:51.772]just by looking at the galleries underneath the bark.
- [00:08:55.301]Now you see those galleries are kind of these
- [00:08:56.924]nice S shape serpentine sort of galleries in there.
- [00:09:00.530]And if they're running vertically,
- [00:09:02.825]that's a dead or dying tree.
- [00:09:05.381]This is common with all agrilus.
- [00:09:08.325]If they're in a vigorous host,
- [00:09:09.523]they are going back and forth, back and forth, why?
- [00:09:13.629]The sap flow in the tree itself can suffocate.
- [00:09:17.107]The trees can defend themselves.
- [00:09:18.975]And if you've got a tree that's already declining,
- [00:09:21.088]those galleries are meandering less and less and less.
- [00:09:25.908]You pull the bark off of an ash tree,
- [00:09:28.860]and you see the galleries just pretty much
- [00:09:30.598]running straight through there.
- [00:09:32.177]That tree's just about done with.
- [00:09:35.537]Probably not a good candidate to even bother to treat
- [00:09:37.751]at that point, because its defenses are so little
- [00:09:40.448]it can't even produce enough sap.
- [00:09:42.437]Lar mentioned it correctly,
- [00:09:43.807]if we keep our ash healthy, that does not prove defenses
- [00:09:48.960]in the sense it produces aliel chemicals
- [00:09:50.537]to defend itself, but it's gonna keep the tree healthier,
- [00:09:52.940]it's gonna have better sap flow,
- [00:09:54.353]and it might deter it or at least help
- [00:09:56.683]keep the population from building up as quickly in the tree.
- [00:10:00.888]It's not gonna prevent an attack.
- [00:10:02.794]It'll just, what, prolong it.
- [00:10:06.901]But that S shape gallery, you can't see in the back
- [00:10:08.932]but this is back in 1969 it was written.
- [00:10:12.418]That that S shape pattern protects the larvae
- [00:10:14.758]from suffocation due to sap leaking
- [00:10:17.456]from the ruptured cell elements.
- [00:10:20.477]And so, tight patterns tend to mean that,
- [00:10:23.044]you know what, you attacked a tree that
- [00:10:24.535]was actually pretty healthy still.
- [00:10:26.354]Of course, subsequent attacks reduce that.
- [00:10:28.595]We can even track that.
- [00:10:30.631]I got a paper in Radiation Biology, 1986.
- [00:10:35.152]I shot X-rays through whole trees!
- [00:10:38.757]It's probably why I'm bald today!
- [00:10:41.081]Alright, and we watched those gallery patterns
- [00:10:43.654]going back and forth.
- [00:10:45.732]And it does relate to the health of the tree.
- [00:10:50.195]Well, EAB, where's it gonna attack,
- [00:10:52.430]it's gonna attack the lower trunk.
- [00:10:54.472]Why is it gonna attack the lower trunk?
- [00:10:55.843]You folks tell me, I'm a teacher,
- [00:10:57.378]so I have to always ask questions.
- [00:10:59.288]Why's it gonna attack the lower trunk?
- [00:11:01.658]More food, good!
- [00:11:02.689]Thicker phloem, phloem is what you're eating.
- [00:11:05.511]phloem is where the sugar's transported.
- [00:11:08.284]That's the yummy part of the tree.
- [00:11:10.943]EAB's smart, let's be there.
- [00:11:13.857]And the thicker the phloem, the more you can feed.
- [00:11:17.064]You know, I don't look at how much trees you have
- [00:11:19.188]in your city, I look at how much phloem
- [00:11:21.220]do you have in your city.
- [00:11:23.296]Bigger trees, more phloem.
- [00:11:25.541]More phloem you got, more food.
- [00:11:27.827]You cut down a lot of ash trees,
- [00:11:29.402]what have you reduced, you've reduced the amount of phloem,
- [00:11:31.773]you've reduced the amount of phloem,
- [00:11:33.139]the population has to get smaller.
- [00:11:34.971]There's not enough food.
- [00:11:36.258]It'd be like if Graham had cut his pizza order in half.
- [00:11:40.702]We would reduce the population here this afternoon,
- [00:11:44.057]because most of you would've left.
- [00:11:45.592]And one person would've died, Graham.
- [00:11:48.201]The less food, population has to go down,
- [00:11:51.526]it only makes sense.
- [00:11:52.774]Oh, hey!
- [00:11:54.008]You know what a 3% of the EABs die from?
- [00:11:57.166]And this is common with all agrilus', this is cool.
- [00:11:59.855]What kills 'em?
- [00:12:01.518]Cannibalism.
- [00:12:03.719]They're not the brightest things.
- [00:12:06.589]If one EAB is going this way, and one EAB is going this way,
- [00:12:11.120]and the one T-bones the other,
- [00:12:13.363]it doesn't stop and say, oh, excuse me,
- [00:12:15.149]I'll wait for you to pass through.
- [00:12:16.852]It'll just chew through the other one.
- [00:12:19.180]It's awesome!
- [00:12:21.838]Alright, the initial attacks start in the top of the tree.
- [00:12:25.199]Why?
- [00:12:26.488]EAB loves sun.
- [00:12:29.394]It likes bright sunny days.
- [00:12:32.548]I chose agrilus for my PhD for this reason.
- [00:12:36.899]When I had to come up with an insect to study,
- [00:12:39.265]I looked all these things up,
- [00:12:40.844]and agrilus likes to fly during days,
- [00:12:44.704]warm sunny days, air temperature between
- [00:12:47.567]about 60 and 80 degrees.
- [00:12:50.671]And I thought, you know what,
- [00:12:51.664]that sounds nice to me to go out and do field studies.
- [00:12:55.359]I'll take that insect.
- [00:12:57.515]And it works!
- [00:12:58.559]They're gonna go over the top of trees,
- [00:12:59.841]cos they're more sunlit,
- [00:13:01.588]but the phloem isn't as thick, is it?
- [00:13:04.915]It's a good place to get started,
- [00:13:06.446]but not a good place to end up.
- [00:13:08.567]And after a while, as they're girdling up there,
- [00:13:11.431]they're reducing the sap flow at the bottom,
- [00:13:14.332]sooner or later, and then of course
- [00:13:15.869]they get more success the lower you go
- [00:13:17.914]cos you've got more food, more pizza for the grill.
- [00:13:22.278]Again, you will find them in the larger branches
- [00:13:24.488]on mature trees, but with all the agrilus,
- [00:13:28.350]bronze birch borer, people used to say,
- [00:13:30.092]if I prune off those dead branches
- [00:13:31.593]I'm getting rid of the bronze birch borer.
- [00:13:32.872]No, bronze birch borer is in the trunk.
- [00:13:34.786]That's where your thicker phloem.
- [00:13:37.502]Well, a health stand of ash could be nearly
- [00:13:39.704]completely killed within six to 10 years.
- [00:13:42.501]It's kind of interesting, as we start going further west,
- [00:13:46.144]and further north, or further up, in the case of Boulder,
- [00:13:49.761]we're kind of stretching that time period.
- [00:13:52.248]We base a lot of what we know on Michigan and Ohio.
- [00:13:56.115]And one of the best bits of advice I can give you
- [00:13:58.489]is that all good information is local.
- [00:14:01.646]Because as you heard from Boulder,
- [00:14:04.672]they're noticing sprouting up in the canopy of the tree.
- [00:14:07.414]Others notice sprouting near the base of the canopy.
- [00:14:09.535]Others notice they weren't getting sprouting at all,
- [00:14:11.913]just depends where you're at.
- [00:14:12.949]So we always find a unique combination.
- [00:14:15.312]But nevertheless, you do go through this death spiral,
- [00:14:18.513]where the population builds up,
- [00:14:20.763]ends up killing a lot of trees,
- [00:14:22.634]and then once you've killed a lot of trees,
- [00:14:23.799]you've reduced the food, you've eaten most of the pizza,
- [00:14:29.115]so the population then has to become reduced
- [00:14:31.685]because there's not enough food to continue
- [00:14:33.216]that upward push of population.
- [00:14:37.416]Just the amount of time depends on where you're at.
- [00:14:41.650]And our strategies have changed too.
- [00:14:44.066]Y'all remember Michigan.
- [00:14:46.716]Boy, I'm glad I wasn't there!
- [00:14:49.658]I mean I had to go back and look at it,
- [00:14:51.687]but if they found an ash with EAB in it,
- [00:14:54.219]they cut down every ash within a half a mile of it.
- [00:14:58.665]That's a one mile death strip.
- [00:15:01.366]Everything gone.
- [00:15:03.568]And it was kind of interesting because
- [00:15:05.151]there was a lot of walnut that was cut down
- [00:15:07.931]because people said it's an ash, we gotta remove it.
- [00:15:11.823]So there were mistakes and anyone remember
- [00:15:13.774]what they did in Ontario?
- [00:15:15.803]They cut that 15 mile wide strip of all the ash,
- [00:15:19.505]figuring they could stop it.
- [00:15:20.747]None of this worked.
- [00:15:21.864]In fact, the craziest thing you can do
- [00:15:24.515]is go out there and try to cut that huge strip.
- [00:15:26.715]In Michigan right now, see that tree right there
- [00:15:30.422]that has the X of death.
- [00:15:33.665]It definitely has EAB, it's already declining seriously,
- [00:15:36.857]so what do they do now?
- [00:15:38.934]They cut that tree down, and they leave the rest.
- [00:15:41.096]Why do they leave the rest?
- [00:15:44.011]To soak up the beetles they weren't able to find,
- [00:15:46.706]to soak up the population they weren't able to get.
- [00:15:49.537]EAB does not like to fly very far if it doesn't have to.
- [00:15:53.156]They, agrilus are crappy fliers.
- [00:15:56.319]If I brought a bunch of EABs in here today,
- [00:15:58.517]and lined you all up outside, and EABs up outside,
- [00:16:02.371]and we had a race, you could all outwalk a flying EAB.
- [00:16:09.010]They're bad fliers.
- [00:16:10.009]I've watched them hit things and fall off.
- [00:16:12.868]And, they will not fly far if they don't have to.
- [00:16:15.156]But you know what?
- [00:16:16.568]If they pop out of a tree, and they don't go back
- [00:16:19.391]to the same tree they just came out of,
- [00:16:20.978]which they often tend to do, just lay eggs
- [00:16:22.887]in the same tree you just emerged from.
- [00:16:25.623]They will fly to the nearest ash.
- [00:16:28.115]And if it's 10 miles away they can do it if they have to.
- [00:16:31.065]But if it's only 100 feet away, I'll go there.
- [00:16:34.257]And so they found with this kind of scorched earth policy,
- [00:16:37.291]not to target removal of ash, as was discussed
- [00:16:41.069]this morning by Phil, but just this,
- [00:16:42.897]let's go out there and kill everything,
- [00:16:44.772]you're always gonna miss some trees.
- [00:16:46.182]They actually end up spreading it further faster.
- [00:16:49.389]In fact, under lower populations the trees you have left
- [00:16:52.659]seem to go even quicker, why?
- [00:16:55.026]Your trees, everybody's gonna attack them.
- [00:16:57.478]Five boxes of pizzas, all those pieces will be gone.
- [00:17:03.121]So again, in China, it's less than a mile.
- [00:17:05.775]And I go to China almost every year
- [00:17:07.603]to take a look at it over there, it's pretty cool.
- [00:17:09.265]But 100 yards or less is pretty common.
- [00:17:11.509]And when I'm over in China looking at EAB,
- [00:17:13.375]it reminds me of bronze birch borer here.
- [00:17:15.656]Again, just finishing off the declining ash
- [00:17:17.695]on hilltops or older ash.
- [00:17:20.089]It's not attacking the healthy ash.
- [00:17:23.277]But this is really good,
- [00:17:25.144]this is what's gonna happen in Nebraska.
- [00:17:27.311]This is what's happened in other areas,
- [00:17:28.849]it's the dispersal of these insects.
- [00:17:30.846]Everybody here has parked your pickup truck
- [00:17:33.790]in a pasture, got back in it,
- [00:17:36.853]there's a grasshopper on the windshield, right?
- [00:17:39.183]And you look at that grasshopper and you get out
- [00:17:42.594]on the blacktop, and you go, I wonder how fast
- [00:17:44.960]I gotta go before that grasshopper comes off.
- [00:17:49.503]And you go 20, 30, 60, well this is science,
- [00:17:53.446]so 100, 120, and then finally it peels off.
- [00:17:57.215]Don't tell me I'm the only one to try that, alright?
- [00:18:01.374]You know they did a study in Michigan?
- [00:18:04.567]And they looked at hitchhiking, because in Illinois
- [00:18:07.719]they noticed that
- [00:18:09.512]they seem to follow transportation corridors.
- [00:18:12.953]And look at that.
- [00:18:14.487]They found attached to cars and they travel
- [00:18:16.189]up to 50 miles an hour.
- [00:18:18.714]I mean, they can hang onto it that long.
- [00:18:19.670]And you'll notice that if you find it in one community,
- [00:18:23.253]and again, out on the plains,
- [00:18:24.749]we don't have ash between towns except in shelter belts
- [00:18:28.485]along the river systems.
- [00:18:30.898]We can have it that you got a big ash population,
- [00:18:33.094]that's a town, 15 miles away, you get another
- [00:18:35.296]ash population, cos that's another town.
- [00:18:37.719]How does it get through there?
- [00:18:38.799]Take a look.
- [00:18:39.799]Well if I'm in this town and the highway's going this way,
- [00:18:41.298]might as well look in the next town.
- [00:18:43.749]Because you're gonna get hitchhikers.
- [00:18:45.531]They're gonna follow.
- [00:18:46.945]Now the other rule you could make in Nebraska,
- [00:18:49.982]is you know what?
- [00:18:51.309]If you have it in Omaha, what you do,
- [00:18:53.371]is you're leaving Omaha, there's big signs.
- [00:18:55.941]Next 10 miles you gotta do 120.
- [00:18:58.813]So they all peel off then.
- [00:19:01.018]That would just be awesome, wouldn't it?
- [00:19:05.831]Get an old BW Boss, you'd be lucky to do 50.
- [00:19:09.820]But nevertheless this is actually true.
- [00:19:11.653]I mean, not speeding, but the fact that
- [00:19:13.272]you do find them following.
- [00:19:15.642]And so you're gonna find them along transportation corridors
- [00:19:18.045]quite often.
- [00:19:18.878]And so again, you can say nobody moves firewood,
- [00:19:21.577]but you're not gonna tell people they can't move cars.
- [00:19:24.733]And so you are gonna get some spread.
- [00:19:27.807]Well, EAB-killed trees have been described as brittle.
- [00:19:33.296]That's the best way to describe 'em.
- [00:19:35.668]Anyone you talk to, anyone with experience out east on 'em,
- [00:19:37.902]brittle is the word.
- [00:19:40.146]And, to the point, and I'll read this,
- [00:19:42.635]though you don't tend to like to stand up in front
- [00:19:44.458]and read slides, but I know you can't see it from the back.
- [00:19:46.537]What many people don't realize about trees infested
- [00:19:50.535]by the emerald ash borer is that when it comes to removal
- [00:19:53.375]of the trees they behave differently
- [00:19:55.080]than non-infested trees.
- [00:19:57.152]The underlying science of these differences
- [00:19:59.509]is not yet completely understood,
- [00:20:01.206]however we do know that the inconsistencies increase
- [00:20:04.243]the risk of injury and death for those
- [00:20:06.536]who hold the woodcutting saw blade.
- [00:20:09.692]And this came out of Ontario, Canada,
- [00:20:11.977]and that's the important point.
- [00:20:13.927]Alright, everybody here that's an arborist,
- [00:20:17.369]has experience removing trees.
- [00:20:19.402]And everybody here knows how to remove an ash tree,
- [00:20:21.357]and how they behave.
- [00:20:22.404]They behave differently.
- [00:20:23.644]They're gonna be inconsistent,
- [00:20:25.016]they're gonna be unpredictable.
- [00:20:26.184]As I said, unpredictable means sometimes
- [00:20:28.058]they're gonna fall just the way you expect them to fall.
- [00:20:31.300]But you also have to be prepared for them to fail
- [00:20:33.006]in ways you did not anticipate.
- [00:20:35.831]I trust EAB trees as much as I trust horses.
- [00:20:40.032]I don't.
- [00:20:41.485]Don't wanna turn my back on either.
- [00:20:45.805]So once EAB is found in your area,
- [00:20:48.924]you're gonna lose all your ash over six to 10
- [00:20:50.836]plus time period, unless you treat them.
- [00:20:55.987]And if you don't, the trees will die,
- [00:20:58.395]and after they die they will fall over,
- [00:21:00.764]and when they fall they might hit something.
- [00:21:03.166]That's my whole talk in a nutshell, alright?
- [00:21:05.832]They're gonna fall and they're gonna hit something,
- [00:21:07.787]and now as city foresters, what are you gonna do
- [00:21:10.193]about it, I like the comments earlier.
- [00:21:12.309]Risk management departments aren't really keen
- [00:21:15.381]on allowing homeowners to leave trees
- [00:21:17.624]that could fall and hit their neighbor's house.
- [00:21:19.529]Or hit the road.
- [00:21:21.853]But on the other hand, can we go out there
- [00:21:24.181]and monitor every dying ash tree?
- [00:21:26.590]Because you know there's people out there
- [00:21:28.208]that will say their tree will come back.
- [00:21:30.123]I've looked at elms the bark shrugged off,
- [00:21:32.372]and people say, you know, it might come back next year.
- [00:21:34.527]No, it won't.
- [00:21:35.980]Alright, but they're hopeful.
- [00:21:38.966]So trees do the unexpected.
- [00:21:41.038]Caution: trees drop pine cones.
- [00:21:43.782]What they didn't say is the pine cones
- [00:21:45.367]are still attached when they come down,
- [00:21:47.479]but nevertheless, you get the idea.
- [00:21:50.461]So ash is considered susceptible to failure in ice
- [00:21:53.291]and snow storms, that is long since known.
- [00:21:56.195]But it's really susceptible there because
- [00:21:58.517]of the poor structure we get on ash.
- [00:22:01.220]You know, V shape union on an ash
- [00:22:04.622]is pretty much, I don't wanna say normal,
- [00:22:06.824]but it is because no one properly prunes them
- [00:22:09.146]when they're young, and you get these,
- [00:22:11.044]that split apart very easily, particularly
- [00:22:13.079]when you get snow loading.
- [00:22:14.564]And ash is a relatively easy, predictable tree for felling.
- [00:22:20.006]You give me a nice, healthy ash tree that I'm just cutting
- [00:22:23.032]down cos it's in the way of a building
- [00:22:24.977]or we're trying to harvest the wood,
- [00:22:27.259]and it's kind of like a yaw.
- [00:22:28.921]Unless there's something unique about it,
- [00:22:31.304]it's gonna, you predict the hinge, everything.
- [00:22:35.378]Pines were also considered fairly predictable, when felling.
- [00:22:42.452]But not with mountain pine.
- [00:22:45.449]There I am doing my other thing,
- [00:22:47.111]and that was working on mountain pine beetle,
- [00:22:48.930]which is, I spent the last 15, 16 years of my life
- [00:22:52.340]working with, and that little insect there
- [00:22:54.782]is not an agrilus, but it's another beetle.
- [00:22:57.395]Has a similar cycle in that once again
- [00:23:00.928]it attacks trees and that death kind of radiates out
- [00:23:03.880]from that center.
- [00:23:06.258]This is another insect that doesn't like to fly far.
- [00:23:09.256]It won't go back to the same tree it attacked,
- [00:23:11.210]because unlike EAB the first year
- [00:23:13.577]this insect attacks a tree, it,
- [00:23:15.945]along with its blue stain fungus manages
- [00:23:18.199]to kill the tree in a year.
- [00:23:20.117]So it has to find a new host the next year.
- [00:23:22.188]But once again, why not just go to the next tree?
- [00:23:25.452]You don't have to go any further if you don't have to.
- [00:23:28.195]And so the question was, well how long can a tree stand
- [00:23:31.635]that's been killed by mountain pine beetle?
- [00:23:34.213]And you look, well how longer are they gonna hang in there,
- [00:23:38.163]and everybody's seen trees like that, right?
- [00:23:40.487]These big old ghost trees out there?
- [00:23:43.269]And look at this.
- [00:23:44.646]Here's from the Custer expedition and 100 years later,
- [00:23:48.092]where they actually went back and looked at the pictures,
- [00:23:50.036]do you see the same dead tree?
- [00:23:52.867]100 years later?
- [00:23:54.607]Still standing?
- [00:23:56.607]And so, initially when the mountain pine beetle came on,
- [00:24:00.386]people said that, well, you know what,
- [00:24:03.162]these trees all, after the beetle kills 'em,
- [00:24:05.693]don't worry about it, they'll stand for decades!
- [00:24:09.967]I said, I don't think they will, this is different,
- [00:24:11.833]they just didn't die, they were killed.
- [00:24:14.866]I think they're gonna behave a little bit differently.
- [00:24:19.438]And what we found, is they do.
- [00:24:22.333]Beetle also attacks the trees, but under this case,
- [00:24:25.573]it goes underneath the bark to lay the eggs.
- [00:24:28.111]Eggs hatch, the larvae feed in the phloem tissue,
- [00:24:30.604]why, because that's where all the good food is.
- [00:24:33.224]And they sever that connection between the roots
- [00:24:35.050]and the top, much as emerald ash borer does,
- [00:24:38.408]but they get a little help
- [00:24:39.651]from a blue stained fungus as well.
- [00:24:42.052]And so what happens is these trees dry out
- [00:24:44.758]very very quickly.
- [00:24:46.706]There's the infested stand in year one,
- [00:24:49.111]those are what I refer to as zombie trees.
- [00:24:51.154]They're dead and they don't know it yet.
- [00:24:53.482]Alright?
- [00:24:54.727]The next year, three years later.
- [00:24:56.885]Five years later.
- [00:24:59.091]Seven years later.
- [00:25:01.463]They've all fallen down.
- [00:25:02.674]If you come out to the Black Hill in South Dakota,
- [00:25:04.943]which we all encourage you to do,
- [00:25:06.517]the four service on their property now says,
- [00:25:08.971]have these signs up warning you,
- [00:25:10.466]look out for falling trees.
- [00:25:13.126]Because these trees are not standing very long.
- [00:25:16.230]They're collapsing rather quickly.
- [00:25:18.225]And this was even predicted early on back in 1998.
- [00:25:22.011]They begin falling three years after becoming infested,
- [00:25:25.138]as I showed you with the slides,
- [00:25:26.674]50% have fallen in five years, 90% in 10 years.
- [00:25:30.627]No, these aren't gonna be ghost forests that stand forever.
- [00:25:34.526]They fall very quickly.
- [00:25:37.438]And here's the interesting thing.
- [00:25:39.063]The sapwood content in green trees is about 85%.
- [00:25:44.303]By the end of August the following the attack
- [00:25:46.558]it's down to 40%.
- [00:25:48.379]A year later it's 16%.
- [00:25:49.797]These trees dry out very quickly, very quickly.
- [00:25:54.907]Much quicker than they do if they're just dying
- [00:25:56.614]of natural causes and slowly decline and die.
- [00:26:00.474]They've been severed.
- [00:26:02.472]We've removed that connection.
- [00:26:04.345]They dry out very quickly.
- [00:26:07.340]In fact, what's interesting is out in the Black Hills
- [00:26:09.789]when you harvest these trees,
- [00:26:11.326]you're kind of paid by the weight.
- [00:26:14.195]When they're taking trees that've been killed
- [00:26:17.726]by mountain pine beetle, and driving across the scales,
- [00:26:20.013]the weight's about half.
- [00:26:22.415]You've pre-dried the wood.
- [00:26:25.275]Already.
- [00:26:27.025]Well you know what?
- [00:26:29.471]Emerald ash borer's the same way.
- [00:26:31.088]Doesn't have a blue stain fungus,
- [00:26:32.545]and it takes longer to kill a tree.
- [00:26:34.244]Not one year.
- [00:26:35.367]But nevertheless, they dry out very quickly.
- [00:26:38.388]You've all seen this, if you live out on the plains.
- [00:26:40.669]That's a cottonwoods.
- [00:26:42.502]There are cottonwoods in South Dakota, ghost trees
- [00:26:44.880]that I call them, that we've used as markers for decades!
- [00:26:50.656]Yeah, turn at the dead cottonwood.
- [00:26:54.496]That's kind of hard, because there's a lot
- [00:26:55.565]of dead cottonwoods, but nevertheless,
- [00:26:57.143]turn at the dead cottonwood.
- [00:26:58.297]And you can give that direction for years,
- [00:26:59.886]it's gonna just stand there forever
- [00:27:01.629]til you park your car underneath it.
- [00:27:03.702]Alright?
- [00:27:04.824]But not an ash, not an ash killed by EAB.
- [00:27:09.641]As this tree's just beginning to do.
- [00:27:14.051]First to decline is the root system.
- [00:27:16.420]Alright, why?
- [00:27:17.376]Well think of that beetle.
- [00:27:18.548]That beetle's chewing through the phloem,
- [00:27:20.213]the part of the tree that's conducting the food,
- [00:27:22.452]and as it's going through there,
- [00:27:23.657]it's severing the connection between the top of the tree
- [00:27:25.447]and the bottom of the tree.
- [00:27:26.771]And so the roots are beginning to starve.
- [00:27:29.343]Roots do store starch.
- [00:27:31.462]And by the way the canopy stores it as well,
- [00:27:33.458]it's not that all the food has to come up in the spring
- [00:27:35.279]of the year, not at all.
- [00:27:36.858]But nevertheless, roots aren't stupid,
- [00:27:38.856]let's put a little away, just in case something
- [00:27:40.520]happens to the top, we can still survive,
- [00:27:42.223]but that connection's been severed.
- [00:27:45.170]So what happens?
- [00:27:46.204]The root system slowly starves and depending
- [00:27:47.573]on the situation in place,
- [00:27:49.522]that tree is going to try and respond to that,
- [00:27:52.183]typically by sending up sprouts along the trunk
- [00:27:54.968]or at the base, that's the reserve shoot, to a tree.
- [00:27:59.154]It's trying to recapture that foliage mass,
- [00:28:01.272]because it's saying wait a minute,
- [00:28:03.437]I'm not getting food anymore, something's happened.
- [00:28:06.931]Well since the roots are the first to decline
- [00:28:10.237]and they decline as that food is utilized,
- [00:28:14.310]the way I look at it, and I'll go back to medicine,
- [00:28:17.763]is that one of the last things to change for you,
- [00:28:21.502]under severe bleeding hemorrhaging,
- [00:28:23.662]is your blood pressure drops.
- [00:28:27.484]And when your blood pressure drops,
- [00:28:30.308]that makes us really really worry.
- [00:28:33.475]Because your body's remarkable.
- [00:28:35.309]It will compensate.
- [00:28:36.384]Other things will change, but it will compensate.
- [00:28:38.329]But when that changes, now you're gonna crash very quickly.
- [00:28:42.411]Same with the AEB trees.
- [00:28:44.655]They're gonna kind of struggle along for a while
- [00:28:46.366]as they're using up that stored food.
- [00:28:49.438]And then once that's exhausted, they crash very quickly,
- [00:28:52.347]towards the end.
- [00:28:55.641]And in fact, we call that ash snap.
- [00:28:58.171]That literally the trees will break off
- [00:29:00.169]right or near the base, why?
- [00:29:01.786]Because the root system is already rotting out.
- [00:29:04.444]It's already died.
- [00:29:06.269]The top then declines and the whole tree goes.
- [00:29:10.179]The sad thing with this, we have cases where
- [00:29:12.051]you're cutting the tree down and it snaps off below you,
- [00:29:15.960]on the plate.
- [00:29:20.111]Again what it does is that serpentine galleries
- [00:29:22.028]that it makes going back and forth,
- [00:29:24.183]that actually cuts it off, and not to go into
- [00:29:26.232]too much of the science, but just the fact
- [00:29:28.100]that you're changing the sugar concentrations
- [00:29:30.227]in the top of these things, actually helps dry out
- [00:29:33.921]the tree as well.
- [00:29:35.746]So essentially what we've got here is a little insect
- [00:29:37.821]that essentially turns a standing tree into a potato chip.
- [00:29:42.137]Dries it out very quickly.
- [00:29:45.299]You ever pick up one of the logs of a tree
- [00:29:46.792]that's been dead of EAB?
- [00:29:48.868]You could pick it up and walk around with it.
- [00:29:50.904]You'll look like Arnold Schwarzenegger, back in the day,
- [00:29:53.345]not the present guy.
- [00:29:54.463]Alright, but back in the day, look at me,
- [00:29:56.823]I can carry all this.
- [00:29:57.778]Yes, it's been dried out!
- [00:29:59.866]And that's why they split.
- [00:30:02.358]That was mentioned, oh, you see those splits, yeah,
- [00:30:04.262]the tissue's dead underneath there.
- [00:30:05.959]The bark is still trying to expand
- [00:30:08.001]cos some of the tree is still growing,
- [00:30:09.658]and what has to happen, it just splits away.
- [00:30:12.897]And if you stick your knife in there,
- [00:30:14.688]you can pull it away and you'll actually see
- [00:30:16.805]the galleries, and you can do the same thing with birch,
- [00:30:21.610]that little picture at the bottom
- [00:30:23.306]that you probably can't see at the back.
- [00:30:24.713]I took that of birch back in the 70's
- [00:30:26.296]when we were looking at how birch died,
- [00:30:28.827]from being severed by bronze birch borer.
- [00:30:32.861]Very similar pattern.
- [00:30:36.064]And look at this, which was published back in 2013 here.
- [00:30:39.469]Moisture content in trees, ash trees
- [00:30:41.306]that weren't infested, 80%.
- [00:30:45.824]One to two years of infestation, 53%.
- [00:30:50.810]27% in four to five years, you see what's happening?
- [00:30:54.061]These trees are drying out.
- [00:30:55.264]You're essentially having boards after a while.
- [00:30:59.145]Good thing is, well, they're dry.
- [00:31:01.219]Bad thing is, they're cracked.
- [00:31:02.964]So the next thing is, it's kinda hard
- [00:31:04.876]to fell a two ply board.
- [00:31:07.171]They're gonna behave a little bit differently.
- [00:31:11.239]So, let's take a look at what happens with these trees.
- [00:31:13.404]They do tend to break off at the base.
- [00:31:15.604]One reason is, the canopy doesn't vibrate as much anymore.
- [00:31:18.758]You ever look at a tree in the wind?
- [00:31:20.623]What's it do, it sways.
- [00:31:22.118]You're not swaying much if your canopy's dead, are you?
- [00:31:24.117]It stiffens the tree.
- [00:31:26.693]So they tend to break off at the base more.
- [00:31:29.064]When you've got a standing dead ash tree.
- [00:31:31.263]Interesting enough with EAB, most of the branches
- [00:31:33.634]are retained until it falls.
- [00:31:36.672]So you got a tree there, it's very stiff
- [00:31:38.370]and tends to snap low.
- [00:31:41.038]And when the branch failures do occur,
- [00:31:42.710]they don't occur out there, that's an ice storm.
- [00:31:45.996]That's where I expect branches to break.
- [00:31:48.749]With EAB trees, they break closer to the union.
- [00:31:54.321]Now, you might be sitting here and say,
- [00:31:56.358]whoa, so what?
- [00:31:59.058]Anybody here that climbs trees is going, ohhhhh.
- [00:32:02.645]That's a bad thing, because that's where I've got my rope.
- [00:32:06.124]Alright, and they tend to break off there.
- [00:32:08.569]And in fact, the break tends to be a greenstick fracture.
- [00:32:13.802]It's a tension failure.
- [00:32:16.841]And if we're climbing that tree,
- [00:32:19.375]we have a rope over that branch,
- [00:32:20.377]we're putting that branch under tension, aren't we?
- [00:32:24.136]And they tend to snap, right where we have the rope.
- [00:32:28.980]So one of the things you're getting already,
- [00:32:30.268]I don't wanna be climbing trees that are infested by EAB.
- [00:32:36.654]Because again, the unpredictable nature of it.
- [00:32:39.067]That a question back there or are you complaining
- [00:32:41.053]about my pizza talk here Graham?
- [00:32:49.760]No, this is the we don't know yet why.
- [00:32:52.594]Yeah.
- [00:32:54.337]You know what?
- [00:32:55.333]We can never figure out anything completely
- [00:32:56.833]because there goes the end of our funding.
- [00:33:00.459]Okay, I'm honest here people.
- [00:33:02.250]No, but in actuality, we don't know yet, Graham,
- [00:33:04.664]as to why they crack further back.
- [00:33:07.416]But again, you start taking a look,
- [00:33:08.878]you see those cracks are getting closer and closer
- [00:33:11.080]to where the union occurs.
- [00:33:14.666]And, here's the big change for, any climbers here?
- [00:33:18.651]Anybody climb?
- [00:33:19.652]Alright, I'm talking to you now
- [00:33:20.653]for the next couple of slides.
- [00:33:22.116]What our climbing has changed is back in the day
- [00:33:25.057]in the 70's, most of you that said you were climbers
- [00:33:27.501]look younger than me.
- [00:33:29.081]We used to free climb trees, crazy enough,
- [00:33:31.163]and what it was, when I got to the top of the tree,
- [00:33:33.293]I took my rope, put it over the branch union
- [00:33:35.869]but around the trunk, and then tie it.
- [00:33:38.534]With a lot of our current systems,
- [00:33:39.858]our rope now is shot up in the tree
- [00:33:41.939]and we just put it over the branch.
- [00:33:43.144]If that branch goes, where are we gonna go?
- [00:33:45.761]Straight to the ground.
- [00:33:48.828]And, for all you climbers,
- [00:33:51.116]remember the idea, now we have that, guess what,
- [00:33:54.985]this is out of the Z, don't worry about
- [00:33:57.141]reading the small print.
- [00:33:58.554]But the idea was, you know what,
- [00:33:59.965]before you climb that tree, any tree,
- [00:34:03.376]you get two people and tug on the rope.
- [00:34:05.972]And if they tug on the rope and that branch holds,
- [00:34:08.878]you can climb it.
- [00:34:10.346]Don't.
- [00:34:13.503]Here's one that failed.
- [00:34:15.327]And by the way, this isn't an ash,
- [00:34:16.160]this is a Siberian elm, but same thing.
- [00:34:19.187]There, the rope up over that branch,
- [00:34:20.720]two people tugged it, the guy climbed it about
- [00:34:22.382]a third of the way up, that's when it snapped.
- [00:34:24.829]Hit the ground, it was rotten.
- [00:34:27.524]And he seemed to get about a third of the way up.
- [00:34:30.312]With the stationary rope systems you've got
- [00:34:32.476]the rope over there like that,
- [00:34:33.885]or like a dead ash like that,
- [00:34:36.653]you might think it would hold, not a chance.
- [00:34:38.615]And, we also did a study and found, you know what,
- [00:34:42.187]two people pulling on the ground aren't using
- [00:34:44.795]the same force as one person climbing the rope.
- [00:34:47.998]We've hooked meters up to test that.
- [00:34:50.252]Two people pulling on a rope can only pull
- [00:34:52.241]at about 60% their weight, their combined weight.
- [00:34:55.485]So you get two 180 people, they're pulling at about
- [00:34:57.814]220 pounds of force.
- [00:35:00.638]One person climbing, they're actually exerting one to 1.4
- [00:35:05.499]force, so that one person climbing is actually at 250.
- [00:35:08.320]One person climbing a rope is actually exerting
- [00:35:10.740]more force than two people pulling a rope.
- [00:35:13.198]Don't anyone here thinking, particularly on the EAB tree,
- [00:35:15.482]that you think I'm still gonna try climbing it,
- [00:35:17.713]let's get me and a buddy, we'll pull on the rope first,
- [00:35:20.573]and then I'll climb it.
- [00:35:21.608]Don't trust that.
- [00:35:22.888]They can fail.
- [00:35:24.480]They have failed.
- [00:35:27.856]Look at this.
- [00:35:29.546]Limbs infested by EAB have dried and weakened.
- [00:35:32.050]This is the thing to remember, climbers.
- [00:35:34.040]A five inch infested branch has the same strength
- [00:35:36.911]as a one inch healthy branch.
- [00:35:40.431]Write that down, climbers.
- [00:35:43.348]How many of you trust your life
- [00:35:44.181]on a one inch ash branch?
- [00:35:46.631]You wouldn't!
- [00:35:47.625]Cos if you did, you're dead, you wouldn't be in
- [00:35:49.043]the audience here today.
- [00:35:50.618]But think of that next time you toss it
- [00:35:52.249]over a five inch branch of a tree that's infested by EAB.
- [00:35:56.348]So much so, a lot of companies have the rule,
- [00:35:58.334]no climbing in trees of more than 20,
- [00:36:01.911]some have gone to 30, I like 20.
- [00:36:04.527]20% canopy decline due to EAB.
- [00:36:08.468]Not just talking, you got an ash with dead branches,
- [00:36:10.791]that's called normal on the plains.
- [00:36:13.321]But if it's a tree infested by EAB,
- [00:36:16.034]and it's at about 20 to 30%,
- [00:36:17.759]you got two choices.
- [00:36:20.329]Either don't climb that tree or find somebody
- [00:36:21.938]you don't like to climb that tree.
- [00:36:24.426]Alright, but here's the problem with the homeowners.
- [00:36:27.131]The tree owners.
- [00:36:28.652]When's our treatment window as our applicators will tell ya?
- [00:36:32.540]You know what, you can treat a tree that's infested,
- [00:36:35.481]depending on the products you're using
- [00:36:36.560]and the delivery systems.
- [00:36:38.369]But we often look at about 30% as being threshold.
- [00:36:40.574]Beyond that, sometimes you can't bring the tree back.
- [00:36:43.765]Well you know what?
- [00:36:46.118]Beyond that, it's gonna cost you a lot more
- [00:36:47.346]to remove the tree.
- [00:36:48.791]To me, tree owners, at 20 to 30% canopy decline,
- [00:36:53.070]that's the you make your decision now.
- [00:36:56.541]You can't procrastinate any longer.
- [00:36:58.690]Cos you wait any longer, people aren't gonna be able
- [00:37:01.602]to use products to bring the tree back,
- [00:37:03.558]and guess what?
- [00:37:04.594]Once it gets beyond 30%, now, it's gonna cost you more
- [00:37:08.057]to remove it, cos I'm not climbin'.
- [00:37:10.923]We're gonna have to see if we can get a bucket in there,
- [00:37:13.387]I'm gonna climb something,
- [00:37:14.588]or I'm gonna get a crane out there.
- [00:37:17.652]Because the cost just goes up.
- [00:37:21.398]And, felling trees, same thing.
- [00:37:23.715]40 to 50% canopy decline, due to EAB.
- [00:37:29.524]Again, everything's with EAB here now.
- [00:37:32.461]That once you get beyond 50%,
- [00:37:34.386]they get a little sketchy.
- [00:37:37.387]What I remember in Michigan back in 2009 and that,
- [00:37:40.710]is you weren't cutting these trees down anymore.
- [00:37:43.821]You were pushing them over with payloaders.
- [00:37:47.480]That gets pretty spendy.
- [00:37:51.781]So once again, the biggest thing I think we need to do,
- [00:37:54.898]is make sure tree owners realize,
- [00:37:57.907]they have to make decisions here.
- [00:37:59.655]This isn't like the Dutch Elm disease where,
- [00:38:01.520]you know what, I'll leave that tree as a ghost tree
- [00:38:03.057]for several years.
- [00:38:05.244]That you really do need to get out there.
- [00:38:07.069]Now again, you can have trees that stand dead for years.
- [00:38:09.035]I said, unpredictable.
- [00:38:12.788]But on the other hand, you can get 'em that just fall,
- [00:38:14.611]so again, people need to make decisions rather soon.
- [00:38:17.874]And we all know homeowners, tree owners,
- [00:38:19.914]they tend to procrastinate, we all do.
- [00:38:21.430]But we need to let 'em know the longer they wait
- [00:38:24.279]the more expensive their decision will become.
- [00:38:30.752]Again, here, you gotta have your retreat path
- [00:38:33.206]when it's falling because boy,
- [00:38:35.413]they are going to lift and go very quickly.
- [00:38:38.790]You still need a hinge, and that's one of the big problems,
- [00:38:41.331]they don't break off below you.
- [00:38:44.174]Anyone here who's cut down a dead tree?
- [00:38:46.558]I don't care what it died of,
- [00:38:48.477]knows that that hinge gets pretty darn small, doesn't it?
- [00:38:52.109]I was taking down some dead trees two days ago,
- [00:38:55.731]on campus, and I told my students,
- [00:38:58.013]okay I've got this thing down.
- [00:38:59.220]I'm not gonna have a 10% hinge.
- [00:39:02.326]That's the max.
- [00:39:03.490]I'm gonna have about a 5%, but at 5% I'm pounding wedges.
- [00:39:06.439]And we're using a rope.
- [00:39:07.943]Because otherwise, I keep cutting,
- [00:39:11.268]and what do I end up doing?
- [00:39:12.385]Cutting through my hinge.
- [00:39:13.964]In standing dead trees it's fairly common.
- [00:39:15.874]And that's what ends up killing people on these EAB trees.
- [00:39:18.082]They're dried out, so they don't start to lift and move
- [00:39:20.326]very soon, not like a normal healthy ash,
- [00:39:22.893]which is gonna start lifting somewhere between
- [00:39:25.350]5% hinge, if you cut everything right.
- [00:39:27.838]They're just gonna sit there.
- [00:39:30.171]Look at this one.
- [00:39:33.338]EAB tree but what I wanted to show you here
- [00:39:35.628]is look at that picture, do you see a hinge?
- [00:39:38.839]No, you're gonna see that a lot.
- [00:39:40.416]Why?
- [00:39:41.249]They kept cutting cos it wasn't moving.
- [00:39:42.752]You cut your hinge, what do you have?
- [00:39:44.704]It's called a spinning top.
- [00:39:47.476]And it can go in any direction.
- [00:39:50.920]Or it can break off below you.
- [00:39:53.913]Look at this, we now have in the Z's,
- [00:39:56.085]you can use skidsters to bring down trees.
- [00:39:58.171]Skidfits are standards, why?
- [00:40:00.896]Because that's what you're doing with EAB trees.
- [00:40:04.293]It's getting more common,
- [00:40:05.422]cos you don't wanna be cutting them.
- [00:40:07.253]Or if you are, you're gonna be really darn careful.
- [00:40:09.879]And think of the cost going up on these things.
- [00:40:12.097]Get people to make decisions earlier.
- [00:40:16.574]And again, this is getting fairly common.
- [00:40:18.354]Cut the thing, belay the whole thing down,
- [00:40:20.224]and then cut it up, and the other thing is,
- [00:40:22.928]the distance you have to be away.
- [00:40:26.152]If I'm felling a tree, I want the people on the rope
- [00:40:26.985]1.5 times the tree's height.
- [00:40:31.337]Not one time.
- [00:40:32.673]Everybody else two times.
- [00:40:34.430]But if I'm felling a tree, my crew 1.5 times.
- [00:40:38.752]Now the standards say they can be as close as one,
- [00:40:41.759]why are we pushing it back to 1.5?
- [00:40:45.253]Cos when they hit, they explode.
- [00:40:48.411]And you get people killed by the debris field.
- [00:40:51.160]So make sure your crew's out far enough.
- [00:40:54.040]Again, look, they tend to explode on impact.
- [00:40:56.525]The whole canopy stays, that's what I find fascinating.
- [00:40:59.931]Canopy tends to stay until it hits the ground
- [00:41:01.495]and then it explodes.
- [00:41:02.660]Anyone ever cut down an old dead cottonwood?
- [00:41:06.661]You don't even need to have a chipper out there,
- [00:41:08.449]because the minute it hits it tends to turn to chips.
- [00:41:10.891]That's what this does, but you got chips flying
- [00:41:12.525]for considerable distances.
- [00:41:15.143]Cos the limbs tend to hang on, all the way til the end.
- [00:41:19.482]This was one, probably one of the worst ones,
- [00:41:22.317]again, infested trees that are dead or present
- [00:41:24.813]severe decline may hold til the hinge is cut.
- [00:41:27.598]On this particular tree, the guy was cutting the tree,
- [00:41:30.211]you can't see it in the back,
- [00:41:32.699]maybe in the front row,
- [00:41:34.290]but there's the gallery pattern in there.
- [00:41:36.942]They had a rope up in the tree, the one guy's cutting it,
- [00:41:39.537]the other person's holding the rope,
- [00:41:41.489]and he said, hey, tug on the rope,
- [00:41:43.374]cos it wasn't moving.
- [00:41:45.324]Said tug more.
- [00:41:47.027]First he couldn't tug more.
- [00:41:48.391]Said tug more.
- [00:41:49.605]So wrapped the rope twice around the body.
- [00:41:52.956]Not a good idea.
- [00:41:54.956]Person pulled, and what happens when people pull?
- [00:41:57.590]They pull and loose it.
- [00:41:59.872]So the tree went forward, back, forward, back, and snapped.
- [00:42:06.060]Rope was around the person, pulled the person to the tree,
- [00:42:08.869]to the stump, as the tree fell backwards
- [00:42:11.523]it hit another tree, top came off,
- [00:42:13.268]came down, killed the person who had the pull rope.
- [00:42:16.720]Cos they'd been pulled into it.
- [00:42:19.413]So again, lots of caution when you're removing these trees.
- [00:42:23.515]By the way, note to all the arborists here,
- [00:42:26.976]this is kind of a note.
- [00:42:28.804]If you're marking out your area to be cut,
- [00:42:30.973]do not use caution tape.
- [00:42:33.792]Use do not cross tape.
- [00:42:36.696]How come?
- [00:42:37.940]Cos there was the unfortunate incident
- [00:42:41.139]where someone used caution tape, a retired guy,
- [00:42:45.470]and retired guys come out of the woodwork
- [00:42:47.008]to watch you remove a tree.
- [00:42:48.380]Retired guy says, oh, caution, I'll be careful.
- [00:42:51.824]Ducked under the tape and got (mumbles).
- [00:42:54.525]You wanna have do not cross.
- [00:42:55.830]In fact, go out and get some electric fence.
- [00:42:58.519]And put it around.
- [00:43:00.077]I mean, you'll zap the guy, but he's probably
- [00:43:01.434]wearings Depends anyway, so it won't matter.
- [00:43:04.245]Alright.
- [00:43:05.908]So, with that, I always do like to finish on time.
- [00:43:08.674]If I can have the lights here so I can go
- [00:43:10.726]over the instructions of what we're doing here next.
- [00:43:14.181]But, that's kind of an overview, but again,
- [00:43:16.252]I think it's of critical importance to let people know,
- [00:43:18.556]they gotta make decisions.
- [00:43:20.692]Are you gonna treat the tree,
- [00:43:22.054]or are you gonna remove the tree?
- [00:43:24.827]And what I find interesting is that,
- [00:43:26.248]that decision making point's about the same for both.
- [00:43:30.490]The last thing is, you definitely have to
- [00:43:33.048]encourage people to hire professionals.
- [00:43:35.560]If we went over incidents that had happened
- [00:43:37.219]with homeowners it would take more than 45 minutes.
- [00:43:40.301]And one of the problems we have for homeowners
- [00:43:42.755]is they can go down to their local rental place,
- [00:43:46.056]and they can get manlifts.
- [00:43:49.100]And there were numerous incidents where someone thought
- [00:43:51.518]they could take down a tree with one of those manlifts,
- [00:43:54.144]and my absolute favorite, cos the guy lived.
- [00:43:56.134]And by the way, some of those lifts
- [00:43:58.129]are pretty sophisticated, I've been in 'em.
- [00:44:00.325]You go up in 'em, you bring it over this way,
- [00:44:02.165]you go too far, you know what it'll do?
- [00:44:03.327]It'll automatically stop.
- [00:44:06.097]Because you're going too far over
- [00:44:07.557]and you'll unbalance it.
- [00:44:09.726]What we really need is one that measures your IQ.
- [00:44:13.099]Hey, these controls aren't working.
- [00:44:14.930]Yeah, that's cos you're too stupid.
- [00:44:17.219]Alright?
- [00:44:18.507]Cos we have 'em where people would get up there,
- [00:44:20.633]they're rigging off a big limb onto the manlift.
- [00:44:24.781]The manlift knows you're going off center so much,
- [00:44:28.138]the balance is off, what it doesn't know,
- [00:44:30.583]in about a second, 1200 pounds is gonna be loaded on it.
- [00:44:34.887]And they snap and come down.
- [00:44:37.262]And that, so again, when I become king of the planet,
- [00:44:39.794]homeowners won't be allowed to do tree work.
- [00:44:43.569]Unfortunately, people do.
- [00:44:45.470]I do have a great article in Arborist News
- [00:44:47.427]and in TCI Magazine that says,
- [00:44:51.568]why homeowners should not be arborists.
- [00:44:54.646]You might wanna look at those articles
- [00:44:56.274]or get a reprint of 'em,
- [00:44:57.566]and hand them off to your customers.
- [00:45:00.025]Before they do something stupid.
- [00:45:02.992]Make sure you hand it to the guy.
- [00:45:05.171]Usually he's the stupider one of the two.
- [00:45:08.707]But make sure all homeowners are aware,
- [00:45:11.042]because it quite serious, this is very high risk activity,
- [00:45:14.545]so again, you're just getting to the beginning here.
- [00:45:17.661]Be safe.
- [00:45:18.867]With that, here's the plan this afternoon!
- [00:45:21.950]It's gonna be, it's warming up outside,
- [00:45:23.364]you can stand the weather.
- [00:45:24.761]This is spring.
- [00:45:26.491]So you're already used to cold, more or less,
- [00:45:28.866]but we have four spots for you to go to this afternoon.
- [00:45:32.729]We have three different delivery systems,
- [00:45:35.854]for pesticides, for chemicals for EAB.
- [00:45:40.486]And obviously three different products.
- [00:45:42.328]What we're doing here today is we're providing
- [00:45:45.267]demonstrations.
- [00:45:47.761]The point of this is that these are products
- [00:45:50.131]and delivery systems that are commonly used.
- [00:45:52.232]We're asking those people to do them.
- [00:45:53.935]I will give you the standard extension thing.
- [00:45:56.597]This is not an endorsement of any delivery system
- [00:46:00.545]or product, nor if one isn't here
- [00:46:03.559]does that mean we're criticizing 'em.
- [00:46:05.552]This is just, we had probably the most common application
- [00:46:09.339]in application methods, we're gonna be seeing here today,
- [00:46:12.778]and also the people were willing to give their time
- [00:46:16.311]to come out and demonstrate today.
- [00:46:18.765]So we certainly appreciate that,
- [00:46:20.267]so they can go through their systems,
- [00:46:21.709]and go through the pros and cons.
- [00:46:23.211]Because of course, nothing's perfect out there.
- [00:46:26.265]We also have one station where Laurie and I
- [00:46:28.760]are gonna go on a little bit more about EAB.
- [00:46:30.956]But here's the problem.
- [00:46:32.698]We gotta herd ya.
- [00:46:34.230]And I thought about this, and I brought my cattler.
- [00:46:37.356]She's pretty good on cows, I think she could nip
- [00:46:39.557]at your heels too and get you going in the right direction.
- [00:46:42.048]But we're gonna go,
- [00:46:43.477]get you out here into the courtyard here,
- [00:46:46.181]and then if I had my dog, I'd just be whistling,
- [00:46:47.718]okay, cut 'em here, she'd be doing it,
- [00:46:49.964]she'd do a great job.
- [00:46:51.007]But we're gonna be using Graham instead.
- [00:46:53.075]I brought my whistle.
- [00:46:54.862](laughs)
- [00:46:56.185]He's pretty good!
- [00:46:57.806]He's gonna start cutting you off,
- [00:46:59.841]and we're gonna take you out.
- [00:47:02.667]I think Eric's gonna be one of the leaders, right?
- [00:47:03.872]So we're gonna start with Eric,
- [00:47:05.644]then we're gonna peel about 20 of you off, or so,
- [00:47:07.927]and you're gonna go with Eric.
- [00:47:09.429]And then we're gonna peel off another 20,
- [00:47:10.790]and you're gonna go with somebody else
- [00:47:12.097]until we got you into four groups.
- [00:47:13.510]You're gonna have about 25 minutes at each station.
- [00:47:17.307]And then we're gonna move ya.
- [00:47:18.804]So, about two hours, you need to come and use
- [00:47:20.859]the restroom, you certainly can.
- [00:47:22.640]Call it 20 minutes.
- [00:47:24.722]And for five minutes for walking,
- [00:47:26.210]20 minutes a station.
- [00:47:27.292]Then we're gonna bring everybody back here,
- [00:47:29.114]cos we got two important things to do.
- [00:47:31.268]Anyone here that needs CU's,
- [00:47:32.676]you gotta come back in the room to get your CU's.
- [00:47:35.019]The other thing is, you're gonna go out there
- [00:47:36.953]and see one applicator, and you're gonna say,
- [00:47:38.113]well here's what we do.
- [00:47:39.943]And you're gonna go to another applicator,
- [00:47:41.395]and they'll say, well here's our demo,
- [00:47:42.721]and you might say, oh, now I have a question
- [00:47:44.288]for the last one.
- [00:47:46.159]Everybody that spoke here today's gonna be standing
- [00:47:48.987]up front, and you're gonna have that opportunity
- [00:47:51.533]to say hey, wait a minute, I saw this outside,
- [00:47:53.800]and I wanted to just ask a question now you're back.
- [00:47:56.712]We're certainly if anything, probably right on schedule.
- [00:47:59.659]If not, probably a little earlier,
- [00:48:01.816]because this should go pretty smooth.
- [00:48:03.933]We'll get you out of here in time.
- [00:48:05.277]But certainly appreciate you all coming.
- [00:48:07.691]This is a good group, we got a lot going on
- [00:48:09.930]this afternoon, so, I'm gonna let you lead 'em out
- [00:48:12.303]in the courtyard, and we'll just start cutting them
- [00:48:14.624]into smaller herds.
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- Tags:
- Forest
- Ash
- Emerald Ash Borer
- Trees
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