Tree Measurement

Trees have a wide variety of sizes and shapes and growth habits. Specimens may grow as individual trunks, multitrunk masses, coppices, clonal colonies, or even more exotic tree complexes. Most champion tree programs focus finding and measuring the largest single-trunk example of each species. There are three basic parameters commonly measured to characterize the size of a single trunk tree: height, girth, and crown spread. Additional details on the methodology of Tree height measurement, Tree girth measurement, Tree crown measurement, and Tree volume measurement are presented in the links herein. A detailed guideline to these basic measurements is provided in The Tree Measuring Guidelines of the Eastern Native Tree Society by Will Blozan.

Summaries of how to measure trees are also presented by various groups involved in documenting big trees around the world. These include among others: a) American Forests Tree Measuring Guidelines; b) National Register of Big Trees - Australia's Champion Trees: Tree Measurement, Champions and Verification; c) Tree Register: A unique record of Notable and Ancient Trees in Britain and Ireland - How to measure trees for inclusion in the Tree Register; and d) NZ Notable Trees Trust. Other parameters also measured include trunk and branch volume, canopy structure, canopy volume, and overall tree shape. Overviews of some of these more advanced measurements are discussed in Blozan above and in "Tsuga Search Measurement Protocols" by Will Blozan and Jess Riddle, September 2006, and tree trunk modeling by Robert Leverett and Leverett and others. The appropriate measurement protocols for multi-trunk trees and other more exotic forms are less well-defined, but some general guidelines are presented below.

Tree height is the vertical distance between the base of the tree and the highest sprig at the top of the tree. The base of the tree is measured for both height and girth as being the elevation at which the pith of the tree intersects the ground surface beneath, or "where the acorn sprouted." On a slope this is considered as halfway between the ground level at the upper and lower sides of the tree. Tree height can be measured in a number of ways with varying degrees of accuracy. There are direct measurements. Shorter trees can be measured using a long pole extended vertically to the top of the tree. Larger trees can be climbed and a tape measurement made from the highest point of the climb to the base of the tree. The distance to the top of the tree can be measured from that point, if needed, using a pole. Historically the most direct method of finding a tree's height was to cut it down and measure it prostrate on the ground.

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