Your trees may sustain significant amounts of damage if a storm comes along and causes flooding.
Spring and summer tend to bring lots and lots of rain here on the East Coast. That means one thing: flooding. Over the last several years, it seems like storms are getting more frequent and more intense. Your trees may sustain significant amounts of damage if a storm comes along and causes flooding. Here are a couple of the ways that flooding can affect your trees!
Soil
Tree roots require oxygen in order to grow and thrive. When there is flooding, water comes in where there was once air. This essentially suffocates and drowns the tree’s roots and if it is prolonged can irreversibly damage a tree. Flooding can also change the pH levels in the soil. Some trees and plant life are okay with slight environmental changes but many are not well equipped to deal with the sudden and intense changes that flooding can bring.
Physical Damage
Driving rains, strong winds, and other conditions that often accompany flooding can cause significant physical damage to trees. Soil erosion can expose roots, which leaves trees vulnerable to all sorts of damage and disease. If there is large enough frozen precipitation, the pieces of ice can actually chip away at the tree bark.
Insects
When flooding occurs, it often forces insects to relocate. Many of these insects end up in trees. Some will bore holes in the bark in an effort to find shelter. Many will feed on the leaves. They will move in wherever they have to in order to stay out of the water’s way. This harms trees because not all trees can support other life, especially younger trees. If a tree is older, larger, and more established it will take a lot more insects to damage it. A young enough tree could potentially be killed by insect damage.
Tree Care for Every Tree from Nelson Tree Specialist
Nelson Tree Specialist provides specialty arborist services, tree crane services, tree care services, and dead tree removal services. We are well known for our top-notch skills and professionalism. We are members of the International Society of Arboriculture and we are considered certified arborists. We are also an accredited business through the Better Business Bureau and we have great reviews on Angie’s List. To find out how we can help your trees, whether they are exotic and strange or normal and plan, give us a call at (301) 854-2218 (Washington, D.C.) or (202) 909-5662 (Baltimore) or visit us online. For more interesting tree facts and tips, follow us on social media on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.