Most Painted Trees Safe from Saws

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Photograph by Lee Hassler

Campus Beauty — Trees within the campus courtyard illustrate the beauty that trees bring to our campus.

   One of the attractive aspects of the University of Arkansas-Monticello campus is the amount and nature of the trees spread around campus.

   Often, when a tree is removed, students can be heard complaining that "all the trees are being cut down on campus." Ironically, some have voiced concern recently that indeed the trees across campus were going to be cut down as evidenced by yellow paint marking these trees. However, contrary to the stigma of trees being marked to cut, the painted trees on campus have instead been annotated for accountability.

   In 2004, the UAM administration received a federally funded $10,000 grant for the improvement of aesthetics in America’s cities and towns.

  "I think (the grant) is going to make an improvement to the health of our trees on campus, especially because of the professional input we have received," said Jim Hughes of the grounds department.

   With the receipt of this grant, the university hired a consultant in Urban Forestry from Little Rock to advise the grounds department in proper tree management safety on campus as well as equipment suggestions and more efficient tree trimming techniques. In response to the consultation, a stump grinder was purchased, an increase in mulch quantity was spread around the younger trees to protect against mower damage, and the bucket used for tree limb removal was repaired to increase safety.

   Incidentally, grounds crews generally try to conduct removal of dangerous limbs or trees when there are few students on campus such as Christmas break, often leaving much to be done in a short period of time. The increased efficiency of the grounds crews should decrease the rush to finish everything within a short space of time.

Photograph by Lee Hassler

Tree Rot — The rotten center to this tree by the MCB building could result in the tree having to be removed for safety considerations.

   Lynne Thompson, professor of Forest Entomology in the school of Forest Resources, has been working to catalogue the campus trees by diameter, location and species. The collected data will be incorporated into a Geographical Information System program designed specifically for Urban Forestry applications and purchased for this project with grant funds. Although additional information such as tree health and detrimental locations of certain trees will be later incorporated into the database when all of the data is gathered, the current objective is to make the general stand information available to the university so that management objectives can be modified accordingly.

   "Six or seven trees have been removed from campus just since the inventories began," Thompson said, noting the need to have the database up and running so problem trees can be identified early on and either treated or removed.

   As the campus tree improvement program for UAM continues to build speed and streamline itself, the students, visitors and faculty of UAM will most likely begin to notice the differences in the quality of our campus trees.

It may be noted that, yes, there will be trees removed from campus from time-to-time, but only because the trees are either dead or produce a significant risk to safety or property. Overall, the improvements made to the campus in the months and years to come should rapidly manifest themselves to the observation of the casual eye.