treecm-package: Assessment of the position of the centre of mass of trees

In treecm: Centre of Mass Assessment and Consolidation of Trees

Description

The centre of mass is a crucial data for arborists in order to consolidate a tree using steel or dynamic cables. Given field-recorded data on branchiness of a tree, the package:

• computes and plots the centre of mass of the tree itself

• simulates the shift in CM position as branches are pruned

• computes branches slenderness coefficient in order to aid the arborist identify potentially dangerous branches

• computes the force acting on a ground plinth and its best position relating to the tree centre of mass, should the tree need to be stabilized by a steel cable

The tree stem is ideally sectioned in logs. The weight of tree components is assessed based on

• the sum of volume of stem logs

• the sum of branches biomass

Field measures to be taken on logs and branches are described in importFieldData and are to be recorded on the tree itself, possibly using tree-climbing tecniques. In order to help the arborist in the pruning selection process a simple plot of branch coefficient of slenderness is implemented.

Note

Branch biomass is computed by allometric equations relating its fresh weight (wood + leaves) to its diameter at point of insertion on the stem. Log biomass is computed by converting its volume to weight using wood fresh density. Volume is computed using Smalian's formula (see logBiomass description). A sample .CSV file is provided to guide through data filling in the field

Author(s)

Marco Bascietto [e-mail]

References

Source code is hosted at GitHub (http://mbask.github.com/treecm/)

See Also

logBiomass importFieldData

Examples

data(stonePine1TreeData)
vectors  <- treeVectors(stonePine1TreeData)
CM       <- centreOfMass(vectors)
plot(vectors, 
   main = "Centre Of Mass", 
   col = "grey30", 
   txtcol = "grey30")
plot(CM)
summary(CM)

treecm documentation built on May 1, 2019, 9:30 p.m.