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Fall 2004

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Kicking Arboriculture Up a Notch
Brian Kane '02G brings leading-edge aboriculture to the Urban Forestry Program

–Deborah Klenotic




	Brian Kane, assistant professor of commercial arboriculture. (photo by Ben Barnhart)

BRIAN KANE, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF commercial arboriculture, and 20 students stand under a maple tree, surrounded by cables, saddles, handsaws, chainsaws, and a wood chipper. Resting a work-gloved hand on the flaking trunk, Kane discusses the importance of safety. Like him, the students are encased in safety gear from hardhat to steel-toed boots.

Unlike him, they haven’t climbed 110 feet up a shade tree, shouldering a chainsaw. But they will: these Forestry 102 students will work with Kane on trees throughout the semester and eventually grow into commercial arborists, who scale leafy heights with confidence, having learned the ropes from the best in the industry.

The UMass Amherst Arboriculture/Urban Forestry Program, where he earned his doctorate, hired Kane away from Virginia Tech University through the generous faculty endowment of the Massachusetts Arborists Association Professorship. The group has long worked with the program to ensure a source of well-qualified labor in the New England tree care industry and supported the programs for more than 60 years with legislation, scholarships, and funding. It launched the faculty endowment to ensure that instruction in commercial arboriculture will continue as an important program at the campus.

Commercial arborists work in the “urban forest,” says Kane, and many of us will be happy to learn we live in one. It doesn’t refer just to trees in large cities, like New York. “It’s trees that exist in any developed area, as opposed to a forest,” Kane explains. “For example, the trees in Wildwood Cemetery in Amherst are an urban forest. The cemetery is part of the regional urban forest. So is the UMass Amherst campus.”

As members of the urban forestry service, “arborists focus on individual trees,” says Kane, who is an International Society of Arboriculture Certified Arborist and ISA Tree Worker, “whereas an urban forester looks at the bigger picture, the regional urban forest.”

What puts Kane a notch above others in the academic discipline is that he’s practiced what he preaches. “I’ve swung around in trees and climbed them with a chainsaw, working for commercial tree-care companies. I also have the academic training, the Ph.D.”

With five years of experience at all levels of commercial tree care, the 34-year-old Kane has worked in every facet of the industry, from working as the arborist assessing trees to managing a tree-care company. He has climbed, pruned, and removed trees; he has installed cables; he has helped clients manage the insect, disease and cultural problems of their trees and shrubs. And he’s spent plenty of time on the ground, too, dragging brush to the chipper and loading logs. He’ll bring this full complement of experience to the classroom.

“At UMass Amherst I’ll teach everything a commercial arborist would do,” he notes. He’ll also teach graduate courses based on his research on shade-tree risk and structure analysis.

Shade trees are the trees we have and love in our yards. “Because they’re usually grown as single specimens, they don’t have the protection from the wind that trees in a forest have,” says Kane. He investigates at what point structural defects, such as decay or a split, constitute a risk. Many major structural defects, such as poor branch attachment, aren’t easy to see, he says.

“Commercial arborists prune trees for aesthetic reasons or because there’s a dead branch or the tree is too close to the house. I’m researching whether one pruning type is better than another in influencing the wind load that shade trees can bear,” says Kane.

“Arboriculture is becoming recognized as a science and a profession,” he continues. “It’s not yet well researched. It’s based more on people’s experience, with comparatively less rigorous scientific data than a field like traditional forestry.”

Pruning types are one example of how Kane blends science with practical application. Another example he offers is the amount of nitrogen applied to a tree. “Commercial arborists might apply one, two, or ten pounds of nitrogen to different kinds of trees, based on their experience,” says Kane. “From a scientific perspective, questions arise that might affect whether these amounts should be applied. For example, what time of year was the nitrogen applied? What type of soil was it applied to?”

Kane’s mint credentials delight the MAA, which has relied solely on Professor Dennis Ryan of the UMass Amherst Arboriculture/Urban Forestry Program for many years as educational advisor.

“The 800-plus members of the MAA are delighted that Brian Kane has joined UMass Amherst,” says Robert Hall, MCA, president of the MAA and owner of Hall Landscapes and Tree Care in Marlboro, Mass. “He’s exactly what we were aiming for when we set out to endow a faculty position in arboriculture at the campus. Brian’s got the academic credentials, he’s paid his dues in the field, and he studied under Professor Ryan. Our industry couldn’t have asked for a more qualified candidate.”
http://www.massarbor.org/
http://www.umass.edu/forwild/

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