Ground Penetrating Radar Adds Non-Invasive Tree Root Detection

Summary: Ground penetrating radar adds non-invasive tree root detection, according to a TREE Fund webinar with Alabama Cooperative Extension Tuesday, Nov. 1, 2022.

Ground penetrating radar allows non-injurious, non-invasive tree root detection even as ground cover sometimes angles above and around heaved, near-surface and surface roots such that the latter are not obvious; Friday, Oct. 1, 2010, 07:33, image of use of Ditch Witch's ground penetrating radar system: The Charles Machine Works, CC BY SA 2.0 Generic, via Wikimedia Commons

Ground penetrating radar adds non-invasive tree root detection, according to Non-Invasive Root Detection: What Is the State of the Art?, noon-hour TREE Fund webinar with Alabama Cooperative Extension Tuesday, Nov. 1, 2022.

The webinar Non-Invasive Root Detection: What Is the State of the Art? bares research bearing hardware and software designs that build up unobtrusive sub-surface tree-root detection. Dr. Beau Brodbeck, Auburn University Extension Specialist in Community Forestry and Arboriculture, coordinated the Eastern noon-hour-long communication by Dr. Andrew Millward and Ph.D. candidate Justin Miron. Toronto Metropolitan University Department of Geography and Environmental Studies Professor Millward and Environmental Applied Science and Management Program Dr.-to-be Miron designed their discussion around four questions.

TREE Fund webinars earn live-broadcast attendees one Continuing Education Unit toward International Society of Arboriculture, National Association of Landscape Professionals or Society of American Foresters recertification.

Seventy-three and 62 percent of attendees respectively furnished, as questions 1 and 2 answers, mapping systems and root detection interesting as tree professionals and frequently used.

Seventy-five percent gave, as question 3 answers, the typical tree morphology as going laterally at modest soil depths from the tree base even in urban environments. Eighteen, 53 and 29 percent hail, as question 4 answers, automated tree root detection systems for regular use, case-by-case use or, without further information, no use. Customary, non-technological, traditional detection and survey equipment and methods involve daylighting roots, techniques that inspire no covering, no mulch, no vegetation, nothing around or atop tree roots.

Daylighting techniques jeopardize the healthy sustainability of deep-surface, heaved near-surface and surface roots that non-invasive tree root detection by ground penetrating radar electromagnetically, non-injuriously journeys through.

Successful tree root detection and mapping systems know keen penetration, for example, to 10-inch (25.4-centimeter), 20-inch (50.8-centimeter), 30-inch (76.2-centimeter) sub-surface depths by microwave-banded, radio-spectrumed electromagnetic radiation.

Data collection, quality and results link with soil moisture levels and soil texture, such that the electromagnetic energy reflects accurately, helpfully or scatters inaccurately, unhelpfully surfaceward. Masterful GPI means mustering, managing and maintaining meaningful horizontal resolution such that root architecture and tree root location, movement, pattern and size may be monitored meticulously. Low moisture levels, sandy soil textures and subsurface concrete number among near-surface, sub-surface and surface negatives to necessary, nice, noteworthy navigation to needed depths.

Ground penetrating radar contrastingly operates as non-discriminating asphalt, cable, metal, pipe mapping system and as non-invasive tree root detection in clayey, moist soils with underground utilities.

Critical root zone, placed from the tree trunk outward one inch (2.54 centimeters) for each inch of trunk diameter, poses prominently in perfected, productive GPI procedures.

Quality GPI quests not only the above-mentioned CRZ but also the permanent root zone (PRZ), which quarters lateral roots and quickens capillarily upward soil-moistened, soil-tree nutrients. Relevant reliability requires GPI resolution such that image and signal retrieval reveal whether tree root systems reside in CRZ and PRZ regions with root-like, stem-like rhizomes. Successful, sustainable GPI suggests seeking and storing the material and signal properties of tree root systems and of whatever else shares sub-surface, near-surface and surface spaces.

It takes controlled environments and improved image resolution, signal identification and sub-surface penetration to tailor ground penetrating radar into topmost non-invasive tree root detection mapping system.

Ground penetrating radar assists arborists and archaeologists around the 10th- to 11th-century-old Heisterburg Castle, some of whose remains are below ground. Arborists attempt to identify which underground features apply to tree root systems even as archaeologists attempt to separate underground built structures from root-like rhizomes and tree roots; November 2014 image of georadar measurements at Heisterburg, Lower Saxony, central northwestern Germany: Axel Hindemith (AxelHH), CC BY SA 3.0 Unported, via Wikimedia Commons

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

Ground penetrating radar allows non-injurious, non-invasive tree root detection even as ground cover sometimes angles above and around heaved, near-surface and surface roots such that the latter are not obvious; Friday, Oct. 1, 2010, 07:33, image of use of Ditch Witch's ground penetrating radar system: The Charles Machine Works, CC BY SA 2.0 Generic, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ground_Penetrating_Radar_in_use.jpg; Ditch Witch, CC BY SA 2.0 Generic, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/officialditchwitch/5876764119

Ground penetrating radar assists arborists and archaeologists around the 10th- to 11th-century-old Heisterburg Castle, some of whose remains are below ground. Arborists attempt to identify which underground features apply to tree root systems even as archaeologists attempt to separate underground built structures from root-like rhizomes and tree roots; November 2014 image of georadar measurements at Heisterburg, Lower Saxony, central northwestern Germany: Axel Hindemith (AxelHH), CC BY SA 3.0 Unported, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Heisterburg_Georadarmessung_Wall.jpg

For further information:

Brodbeck, Beau; Millward, Andrew; and Jason Miron. 1 November 2022. "Non-Invasive Root Detection: What Is the State of the Art?" TREE Fund and Alabama Cooperative Extension System webinar. Naperville IL: TREE Fund; Huntsville AL: Alabama A&M University; and Auburn AL: Auburn University.
Available @

Gilman, Ed. 2011. An Illustrated Guide to Pruning. Third Edition. Boston MA: Cengage.

Hayes, Ed. 2001. Evaluating Tree Defects. Revised, Special Edition. Rochester MN: Safe Trees.