BMP - Tree Inventories - 25

* Reduce. Decrease height and/or spread of the crown through reduction pruning. This type of pruning has many applications in the urban
forest, including providing clearance near electric utilities and lighting, maintaining tree size in areas with limited space, and to reduce
the wind load. The percentage and location of reduction, and branch
size range, should be specified.
* Restore. Employ selective pruning to redevelop structure, form, and
appearance of severely pruned, vandalized, or damaged trees.
* Stump/grind. This category can be used for existing stumps above a set
diameter, exceeding a minimum height above grade, such as 2 in (5 cm),
or those to be scheduled for removal. A diameter measurement or range
may be desirable for contracting and planning stump grinding work.
* Inspect. A tree with questionable health or structure, but that cannot
be sufficiently evaluated during data collection, can be marked for
further attention. When maintenance requests are received, the tree
may be inspected prior to scheduling work.
* Plant. If site information is being collected, this category indicates
that the site is available for planting. It may be classified by size,
such as Plant 1, Plant 2, Plant 3 (or S, M, L) for small, medium and
large planting sites.

Work Priority

Many systems allow the collection of work priority information to identify
trees with the greatest need, so they may be worked on first. Priority can be
a stand-alone attribute or integrated with the work class (e.g., Priority 1, 2
or 3 or Remove 1, Remove 2, Prune 1, Prune 2).

Height

The height of the entire tree or the crown can be measured, estimated or categorized. Height data is relatively expensive to measure accurately because
it requires a dedicated instrument, is subject to error on trees that lack a
central leader, and takes quite a bit of time. Also, such information is rarely
useful in urban forestry. It has been shown that trained data collectors can
make reliable visual estimates if they occasionally check themselves against
actual measured height. Visual estimates of height-class [e.g., in units of 10
ft (3 m)] are also useful, because height changes.

BMP - Tree Inventories

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