The measurement of plant vitality in landscape trees

Abstract

Understanding plant vitality is essential to the maintenance of healthy trees in urban environments. Tree vitality is difficult to quantify, but is usually assessed by tree growth and physiological measurements. A review of current methods used for the field measurement of plant vitality in landscape trees is presented. Methods are compared in terms of their ease of use, reliability, versatility and portability. Tree growth and visual assessment methods are an accurate, if gross measure of tree vitality. Cambial electrical resistance was a popular method for measuring tree vitality in the 1980s and 1990s, but has had variable results when compared to tree growth measurements. Methods that assess chlorophyll fluorescence, chlorophyll content or antioxidant levels have potential for assessing the plant vitality. However, these have not been widely assessed for use on landscape trees.