If a tree falls on the University of Oregon campus, it’s not for lack of planning.
That’s because, like any large arboretum — the University of Oregon measures 295 acres with more than 3,000 individual trees and 500 varieties — campus requires specialized maintenance of its foliage.
Summer, the season for tree felling on campus, is well underway as Facilities Services workers inspect, remove and replant timber to keep the University safe and green.
John Anthony, the University’s arborist for 22 years, thinks it is safer to do the majority of cutting during the summer and to leave the inspection and analysis portions of his job for the cold, rainy months.
“There is the season for doing major jobs, usually when it is dry and there are fewer people around,” Anthony said. “I am the only climber, and it is a bad idea to try to climb up a trunk covered in wet moss.”
Facilities Services executes most of the necessary removals all at one time, usually in the summer months when fewer students are on campus and the possibility of foul weather obstructing their work is low.
Campus groundskeepers, working under the parameters of the 2010 Campus Plan, the Campus Heritage Landscape Plan and the Campus Tree Plan, have developed a multi-faceted approach to tree removal involving weighing trees’ aesthetic, environmental, educational and historical values against their potentials for structural failure.
Calls for removal are evaluated on a case-by-case basis, keeping in mind that a safe learning environment is the campus’ paramount purpose, which sometimes comes at a cost for its other resident organisms. Arborists refer to the point at which extensive deterioration warrants removal as the “action threshold.”
The most recent tree removal occurred last Tuesday when a pin oak located along the walkway between Gerlinger Hall and Knight Library was cut.
Anthony said that a second arborist was brought in more than five years ago to help examine an enormous 10-foot vertical cavity near the base of the 10-story tree. Despite the oak’s substantial level of decay, the arborists concluded that it could remain standing for five more years if “selective reductions” to the canopy were made in order to reduce its height and weight.
“It wasn’t quite at the action threshold,” Anthony said. “An acceptable risk was calculated, and we figured we could get five more safe years out of it; (Tuesday) was the end of those five years.”
A crack had formed in the base of the oak in a windstorm, and at that time, it was clear to Anthony that the decay was continuing and that it would ultimately have to be felled. As of now, the tree has not been tree-ring dated because of extensive rot damage near the trunk base.
Charlotte Cleary, a Facilities Services student worker, witnessed the removal and understood its necessity.
“I was sad to see the tree go, but it wasn’t healthy, and it’s better to come down now than in a storm,” Cleary said.
The University has been able to make light of an otherwise melancholy chore by ensuring that the oak’s wood and leaves will not be wasted. Its trunk is set to be milled off-campus by an independent sawmill operator, and the lumber will be trucked back and recycled for use in University structures and projects.
Anthony said he was glad the removal process could be somewhat sustainable.
“We are very excited about going in-house,” Anthony said.
The leaves and wood that cannot be milled will be ground into wood chips and used as mulch and compost in garden beds around campus.
Throughout his 22-year career at the University, Anthony has fine-tuned a compassionate and empirical process for tree diagnosis and removal that begins with the use of a shovel.
“If you see it’s in trouble, look at the roots,” Anthony said. “First, expose the root crown; this is a litmus test for how serious the condition is.”
The next step of the diagnosis involves making a decision based on the gravity of the tree’s potential risks, incorporating factors such as its location, its extent of decay, and its historical and educational significance.
Another tree that will soon meet the oak’s fate is a 40-foot green mountain sugar maple located along 13th Avenue near Chapman Hall at the northeast corner of the Memorial Quad.
During the past several years, the maple has lost more than half of its foliage, which, Anthony said, is a “clarion call for trouble.”
Last spring, the arborist dug up the maple’s root crown and found extensive decay. “It is dead as a stone,” Anthony said. “It is way over the threshold and past the point of acceptability.”
On such a historical and green campus, the University takes its trees seriously. Anthony represented Facilities Services as a laborer and coordinator for the Campus Tree Plan, which was drafted in 2001 and revised in 2008 to address these factors and to delineate a process for managing planting and removal to maintain a healthy tree canopy and the valuable landscape patterns it creates.
According to the plan, the University is committed to keeping a diverse number of trees through replacement and ensuring the health of all trees on campus.
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