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There is a strong allometric relationship between stem diameter at breast height (DBH) and crown diameter in healthy trees in the young to mature stages of their growth. How do geographical position, site conditions and management treatments influence this relationship? This study included only free-standing urban trees, thus providing data on the growth potential of the species included in the survey in typical urban conditions by linking this with estimated tree age. Field work involved recording the dimensions and growing conditions of 400 urban trees in two UK cities; Norwich and Peterborough. Species selected for this study were pedunculate oak (Quercus robur L.), sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus L.), silver birch (Betula pendula Roth.) and Norway maple (Acer platanoides L.). The mean relationship between DBH and crown diameter exhibited a restricted range (a ratio of 24 to 27) in this large sample. The results indicated that the factor of species did not have a strong impact on the allometric relationship in the case of the four species measured. It is therefore possible to produce good predictions of crown size by combining data from all the species used in this survey. A key finding of this study is that previous tree pruning and external site factors, such as hard surfacing over the rooting area and soil type, had no significant influence on the relationship between DBH and crown diameter.

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Creating engaging online resources is an important part of the rapidly changing discipline of e-tutoring. There is increasing use of a wide range of media for online training but only a limited number of studies assessing their effectiveness. This study involved an educator working collegiately with cohorts of online students studying a specialist land-based postgraduate degree programme (n = 79).  The opinions of these mature online students, on current and potential learning resources, informed two interventions that provided novel online resources to the course. Student opinion on these new resources was captured and subjected to thematic analysis. The results identify that these students’ favoured resources were online lectures, course notes, primary literature and tutors’ opinion pieces because they were perceived as accessible, easy to engage with, assignment-related and/or provided something akin to a ‘university campus experience’.  In contrast, podcasts and knowledge review quizzes were strongly disfavoured by the majority of respondents. The implications of this study in relation to online teaching practice are discussed.