You can help save lives in your county by creating a KMZ overlay in Google Earth as I have done for Cass County Michigan. These maps can be a great help to the Road Commissions and property owners in locating and removing dangerous dead trees. Dead trees can be identified on the high resolution Google Earth photos with about a 90% accuracy.
The ash borer has infested most all states East of the Rocky Mountains already and will eventually be in all states that have ash trees. States where the borer has been for more than three years have dangerous trees standing along the roads. States where infestation is just beginning will not have dangerous ash trees for a year or so.
If you are in a state that has large dead ash trees standing along the roadways, then lives are at risk. Landowners are liable for these dead trees in most states, but many of the owners are not aware of it. Road Commissions can remove the dead trees as a safety issue if they are on the right of way, but they don't have to since they belong to the landowners. Large trees outside the right of way can be dangerous as well if they are tall enough.
If you decide to make an overlay for your county, instructions on how to do so are on the 'Make a KMZ file' page. Once you have it done, email me your KMZ file at LRGoodger *at* gmail *dot* com and I will put it on this site.
Tips on identifying dead trees on Google Earth
Most of the large, dead ash trees will be obvious when you zoom in close enough on a woodlot, but there are things that have to be considered. The time of year in which the photos were taken is very important. This can clearly be seen by looking at the trees I have NOT marked on the Cass County MI overlay.
1. Click the View tab on the Google Earth main menu and check the 'Historical Imagery' box. That puts a slide bar at the top of the map that lets you select the date of the photo set you want to look at.
In Cass county, some photos were taken on 4/23/2017. All of the trees are not leafed out this early in the year. Maple trees are, but the Oaks, Walnuts, Catalpa, etc. are not. That makes them hard to separate from the dead trees. Also, photos taken in October or later show walnut trees as pretty bare, so you have to be careful with those. Usually the dead ash will have lost their bark on the upper branches, so they look white compared to the walnuts. The photos taken from May to September are the best. I have in some cases been able to verify that a tree is no longer standing because it is visible on the 9/15/2015 set but not on the 4/23/2017 set.
Other considerations are;
1. Mark gravel roads?
2. Mark lake and residential areas?
I didn't mark these areas because vehicle speeds are slower and an accident less likely, but if a tree falls directly on top of a passing car or person, these areas can be dangerous as well.
Visual verification
During visual verification in Cass County, I discovered that some very large dead ash were missed in the Google Earth search. It was not very many, but it does happen. The reason is because in areas where there are other large trees adjacent to them, the other trees will grow into the area opened up by the dead ash missing foliage and obscure it.
Also, it is difficult to judge tree size on Google Earth. Some clumps of small dead ash can look like a large one in the photo. There are many small ones I removed because they are much less dangerous, but they can still be a hazard to motorcyclists. After visual verification, I changed the line thickness to 10 on large, dangerous trees. That makes the circles look like crosses at high altitude. I've also recently begun using line thickness 15 on trees over 24" in diameter and 20 for 36" or larger.
Don't wait until someone you know gets killed by one of these things to help out! If we can save even one life like that of 16 year old Nicholas Hewitt or 28 year old mother Devon Cook, then it was all worth it.