Fund4Trees has awarded a research grant to Dr Andrew Hirons and his research group at Myerscough College to support their work on enhancing the performance of urban storm-water management schemes with tree selection by developing a new approach to assessing waterlogging tolerance in temperate trees.
Whilst the increasing prominence of stormwater management schemes provides excellent opportunities for the integration of trees into new urban developments, there is considerable uncertainty over which species will perform best in these schemes. This project aims to evaluate the response of sap flow in trees subjected to waterlogging.
As sap flow dynamics integrate both the aerial and edaphic environments, the response of sap flow will help to characterise waterlogging tolerance very effectively. This information will be used to compare species’ performance and improve the overall confidence of tree selection for sites prone to waterlogging. It may also result in a novel way to evaluate waterlogging stress in trees.
The Fund4Trees research grant is supporting this collaborative research project between Andrew Hirons (University Centre Myerscough) and Henrik Sjöman (Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences: SLU). The grant will be used to buy sap flow sensors and bolster the capacity of experiments that will take place during the growing season of 2020.
Dr Hirons said,
“I am thrilled that Fund4Trees is supporting this research. Their grant will help improve the capacity of the project and in time deliver some really useful information to arboriculturists about waterlogging tolerance in trees.”
Look out for the results which will be shared at future arboricultural conferences and in academic literature.
This article was taken form Issue 188 Spring 2020 of the ARB Magazine, which is available to view free to members by simply logging in to the website and viewing your profile area.