"Rather dramatic": 28 percent of urban trees in danger - this is how Moosburg wants to take countermeasures

Created: 04/07/2022, 12:00 p.m

By: Nico Bauer

There is an intensive need for action with regard to the urban tree population of Moosburg.

(symbol image) © Patrick Seeger

How are the urban trees doing?

Moosburg's city gardener has now given a detailed insight - and his report is worrying.

Moosburg

– The urban green in Moosburg is very important to the city councillors.

It was therefore one of the committee's wishes to be updated on the condition of the trees and the concerns about the city forest.

And so they invited the city gardener Michael Guyens, who has impressive statistics.

Guyens presented the urban decision-makers with the register of 4046 trees recorded in the Moosburg urban area.

138 of them had to be felled in the meantime.

In two thirds, illnesses were the cause of the measure, in one third it was construction work.

The municipal tree list currently includes 3292 trees that have no abnormalities.

There are also the categories "slightly damaged" (483 trees), "moderately damaged" (124) and "severely damaged" (9).

Climatic changes cause problems for Moosburg trees

"It doesn't look so good anymore in terms of vitality," explained the city gardener.

With the school grades 1 and 2, exactly 71 percent of the stock with 2470 trees were rated.

15 percent are ash trees, which realistically will sooner or later be affected by ash dieback.

"They will leave us in the next 10 to 20 years," Guyens said.

The second most common species (13 percent) is the sycamore maple, which is increasingly having problems with climatic changes.

The city gardener sees a great danger that these 28 percent of the current stock will be lost - which would be well over 1000 trees.

(By the way: everything from the region is now also available in our regular Freising newsletter.)

Clearings like these are becoming an increasing problem for the Moosburg city forest - because the trees are then more susceptible to storm damage.

© BAUER

The city nursery is already trying to counteract this trend – with around 100 new plantings every year.

"We plant as much as we can water," explained the city gardener.

When choosing, pay attention to more diversity and choose trees that can cope better with climatic changes such as the ever longer dry phases or heavy rain events.

This results in a more colorful picture and, above all, one has the advantage of “not having to fell an entire block of trees” in the case of special tree diseases.

Mayor Josef Dollinger made it clear at this point that he would support the city garden center even if a tree was planted against the resistance of a resident.

There are always situations like this.

Natural shading from trees saves energy in buildings

“Cities are overheating due to global warming,” stressed Michael Guyens.

And it is precisely here that the importance of the trees, which shade and cool many areas, increases.

"Reducing the pavement temperature is the most important point for us," the expert made clear.

On the other hand, around 500 liters from the groundwater are evaporated by the urban trees.

He pointed out that natural shading of buildings eliminates the need for energy-intensive air conditioning measures.

In a statement to speak, Evelin Altenbeck (Greens) spoke of an action in Berlin, where people kept pouring buckets of water onto the trees in the summer as a sign of appreciation.

She would wish that something like this would also be tackled in the city.

On the other hand, the city gardener took a critical view of complete sponsorships by citizens for individual trees, because a lot could be damaged with incorrect care.

Problematic clearings in the forest

"It looks rather dramatic in the city forest," the city gardener had to explain when asked.

In the beginning, 80 percent of this consisted of ash trees and even with spruce plantings it didn't get any better.

That is why there are problematic clearings that make the forest prone to collapse during storms.

"The situation there will remain like this for a long time because of the two tree species," said Guyens, "but I can say that we have not felled a single healthy tree there".

You can find more current news from the district of Freising at Merkur.de/Freising.