Experimental Test of Non-Destructive Methods to Assess the Anchorage of Trees

More than 280 trees were uprooted in winching tests monitored by high resolution inclinometers at the base of and a forcemeter mounted line. The dataset comprises growing on different urban forest sites Europe North America mainly consists fifteen widespread tree species. For first time, large number measured non-destructively prior to uprooting failure, as commonly practiced consulting arborists static load tests. With these tests, bending moment required cause 0.25° root plate inclination (rotational stiffness) was determined used predict strength system from equations described two evaluation methods currently arboriculture. predictions tested against anchorage strength, i.e., maximum that uproot trees. Both delivered good estimates, which indicates rotational stiffness stem is suitable proxy for strength. can be considered valid assessing likelihood they systematically underestimate rarely overestimate actual resistance failure tree’s system. As trend, differences between predicted larger small trees, overcome angles. While quality differed species, it did not differ sites. angles all our support models mechanics involved previously have been only conifers with shallow