The Application of Environmental Arboriculture to Tree Pruning in Urban Contexts

** Available subtitles in English, French and Spanish **
Speaker: David S. Restrepo, City of Paris Tree and Woods Service
Title: The Application of Environmental Arboriculture to Tree Pruning in Urban Contexts
Event: ArborCon 2021, ISA Michigan, Lansing, MI and beyond...
February 12th, 2021
Excerpt:
This session is on environmental arboriculture applied to tree pruning in urban contexts. It aims to encourage and persuade attendees of three main points:
1. Firstly, to acknowledge artificial fractures, known as coronet cuts, as a legitimate type of pruning cut. Also referred to as natural fracture pruning cuts, coronet cuts simulate natural fractures and belong in the arborist’s pruning tool box as much as natural target pruning cuts do. It's just a matter of recognizing and acknowledging legitimate situations where it's reasonable and appropriate to implement them, where they have a place of their own.
2. Secondly, this session aims to encourage and persuade attendees to tolerate and allow natural fractures and dead wood whenever it's reasonable and appropriate. Trees live in mutuality with natural fractures and dead wood, this is a natural condition that we can acknowledge and tolerate when the situation allows for it and the risks associated with it are not imminent. In order to profit from the numerous benefits that trees offer to the environment and our quality of life, a reasoned and proportionate level of risk must be accepted.
3. Thirdly, this session aims to encourage and persuade attendees to recognize and acknowledge the crucial role that arborists play in boosting the planet’s biodiversity in urban contexts, by preserving and encouraging the establishment of dendromicrohabitats. It all starts at a micro scale with fungi, bacteria and invertebrates. Saproxilic habitats - dendromicrohabitats- are at the core of biodiversity. The macro scale depends on the micro scale. This talk will cover an overview of dendromicrohabitats and acknowledge natural and artificial fractures (coronet cuts) and dead wood as a way to implement dendromicrohabitats in urban contexts in order to boost biodiversity whenever it's reasonable and appropriate.

[@IgnacioPiedrafitaLatasa]

Very useful, David! Congrats!