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Reducing the canopy animation
The clip shows a portion of a tree top before and after canopy reduction. The curved dashed line drawn through the middle of the illustration identifies a "canopy within an canopy"; stems beyond this point will be removed with reduction cuts. The dotted lines represent the branch sections that are removed. Live, unpruned branches are left on the edge of the new, smaller canopy. No heading cuts were used.
Appropriate canopy reduction removes branches and stems from the outer
portion of the canopy back to lateral branches at least one-third the
diameter of the removed stems or branches. When done properly a pleasing unpruned
natural look to the tree is achieved.
See: Animation of reducing an entire tree.
