girdling root

I need some help determining what to do with my ~40 y/o red maple with some pretty gnarly girdled roots. I bought my house a little over a year ago and there’s a beautiful red maple in the front yard. Unfortunately, it had a mulch volcano around the trunk and when I pulled it back, I ran into...

I have a new Princeton Elm. It was planted last fall and this was its first spring / summer at my location. It's probably 20 feet tall. Today I just carefully dug down about 3 inches to get to the root flare. Lots of girdling roots. Should I cut them now? Wait till early spring? When...