Partial diagnosis of street tree under power lines in West Regional of Minas Gerais

Abstract

This work aimed to present a partial diagnosis of street tree under power grid in five cities in the West Region of Minas Gerais, which had more power outages because of conflicts with trees. We identified 186 trees, belonging to 17 species of exotic origin and 30 species of native origin. The most frequent species were Poincianella pluviosa (30.43%), Ligustrum lucidum (10.86%), Michelia champaca (6.52%) and Schinus molle (4.89%), which together amounted to 52.7% of the assessed trees. Most trees (84.78%) were located in streets wider than 7 m, and 36.55% of the trees were planted in sidewalks with a minimum of 2 m wide. Those trees present ther first bifurcation at over 1.80 m above ground level. The pruning performed due to conflicts with the grid amounted 40.22%. Trees with height equal or over 6 m represents 72.83% of the sampled population. It was observed that there is not an appropriate management plan of urban trees under the grid, as the trees frequency is concentrate on few species that were mostly medium and large size.