Santa Barbara, CA Expert Arborists

Santa Barbara’s Tree Challenges

Invasive shot hole borers were found in Santa Barbara County in 2017, in oaks and sycamores in nearby Montecito, according to UC Cooperative Extension. The beetles carry a fungus that causes branch dieback, and creekside California sycamore is among the trees they attack. Eucalyptus in older groves and along roads face eucalyptus longhorned borer and red gum lerp psyllid, and sycamores often lose leaves to anthracnose in a cool, wet spring. The city’s Moreton Bay Fig shows how large a tree can grow in this climate, and how much room its roots need.

Weather sets the calendar. Winter storms roll in off the Pacific after months without rain, and a heavy series can saturate foothill soils and bring down trees with weak root plates. Sundowner winds come down the mountain slopes hot and dry, stressing canopies and raising fire danger, and the Montecito debris flow of January 2018 showed what heavy rain on a burned slope can do. Drought years leave coast live oaks thin and more open to root disease. An expert arborist times pruning and removals around that cycle, not after a limb has already come down.