Ultrasonic, electric and radar measurements for living trees assessment

The problem of tree assessment is increasingly felt both as a problem of life quality as well as a problem of safety within the city management. One of the main causes of the collapse of a tree is the decay of the bearing capacity of some of the primary roots caused by some kind of fytopathology. This deterioration either changes the physical characteristics of the wood, or changes the water content in the peripheral part of the tree immediately above the ground where the root lies. Experiments have been carried out with regard to these phenomena, to check if one or more geophysical techniques were able to see, with the necessary geometrical and physical resolution, the decay. The techniques tested were: ultrasonic tomography, electric tomography and radar. The problems that arose from the small dimensions of the objects were fixed either increasing the frequency of the testing fields or reducing the size of the probes. The results show very promising possibilities of applications of these quite common geophysical techniques to the non invasive testing of trees, piles and building wood.