Trees Fall, Drought Blamed Yet Again
The flurry of storm activity over the past week has focused attention on big trees - especially the trees that have fallen. News outlets have produced a stream of reports mentioning the damage caused by tree failures. The AJC , WDUN , The West Georgian , WXIA , and WGCL , all ran mainstream stories just in the past few days. Because the drought is still in people's minds, it has become a catchall scapegoat for a number of tree-related problems. It is easy for people to grasp for a connection between drought stress and trees falling, but it is somewhat rash to do so without fully analyzing each case. Catastrophic tree failure is an event that involves the interaction of forces upon a very complex tree system. There are few resources and tools available to diagnose drought-related failures. Of the catastrophic failures that I have recently observed in Atlanta, drought has not been the primary or secondary cause. Rather, each case involved serious structural problems such as ...