60ft Oak Near House, rocky land

[jaceonwheels]

Looking for advice. Take down, prune or leave alone? The big issue here is that our property in NY state is all rock (mostly shale?), with the rock being just below the surface everywhere. Just a few feet away are some boulders which are sitting on exposed bedrock. I can't imagine this tree has deep roots? It seems health enough, although it does drop some small branches and twigs fairly often. Its about 20ft from our house, and just overhanging incoming power line. Estimated 60ft tall, pictures attached. If it needs to go, is the oak valuable to anyone who might offer a discount on the removal?

 

[ATH]

Are blowdowns common? I assume it has seen a lot of wind and not blown down yet...right?

I'm not saying it cannot blow over...but generally there are hints that is more likely to happen such as specific kinds of decay around the roots. Unbalanced crowns can be a problem, but that looks pretty even.

I don't live the large branch in the middle pic. Generally, we'd rather see the diameter of a branch 1/3 of the diameter of the trunk where it attaches. But I would not remove now that as it would leave a giant wound on the trunk.

Leave it alone.

 

[singinwoodwackr]

Trees are pretty darn good at adapting. If roots can’t go down they will spread out for the needed stability.

 

[ATH]

Trees are pretty darn good at adapting. If roots can’t go down they will spread out for the needed stability.

Very true. Here we have very deep soils, but they are heavy clay so not a lot of air can penetrate. Roots will go as deep as the can and still have oxygen. That means 90% are in the top 12-18". Even in sandy soils they aren't a lot deeper because of oxygen availability.

 

[Marley5]

You just never know.

 

[ATH]

Bummer. You are right, we don't know. I'll also point out there's also a few thousand trees in the background that didn't fall, so there is that too. Also, there are millions of cars in salvage lots which are much worse off than that and almost all of them were not hit by trees.

You also never know:
*When another driver will go left of center and smash you head on...but we still drive an awful lot.
*When the junk we drink is gonna give us fatal cancer...but Soda, Beer, and Coffee are each multi-billion dollar industries.
*When a kitchen fire will burn down the house...but we still cook every day (FWIW, house fires kill about 10x the people per year that falling trees do...)

I'm not saying those are bad things in themselves (driving...driving left of center is bad, unless you are in England, then right of center is bad). I'm saying those are higher risk than an otherwise sturdy tree, yet we aren't asking "should I stop driving, should I only drink twice distilled water, or should I only eat cold food?"....oh, yeah, CDC says 3000 deaths and 48MM sick from food-related illness, so probably should keep cooking!

Bottom line: I'd still keep the tree unless there are significant defects. Have a Tree Risk Assessment Qualified Arborist evaluate the tree if worries you.