A Survey on Rope-Based Ascending Techniques and Materials of Professional Arborists in Italy ^†

The techniques funded for rope-based access to the tree canopy (the so-called tree climbing) have been spreading in recent years. A variety of practices, such as pruning, felling of trees, cabling, phytosanitary inspections, and others, can be carried out using these techniques, and the methods allow one to operate on trees placed in any location, proving extremely suitable for maintaining trees grown in an urban environment. In Italy, the number of arborists operating with a rope on trees is increasing significantly. They are usually highly specialized professionals, and they use specific techniques and materials. Despite the diffusion of these techniques in modern arboriculture, it is not easy to find sound ad updated information and data on them. In this work, based mainly on the answers obtained from a specific questionnaire addressed to 86 Italian professional climbers, some aspects of the applied techniques were reported. The paper shows data on professional training and formation, on the work organization, and on the utilized materials and equipment. In general, a large variety of situations are reported, a result probably linked to the fast growth of the sector in the past years.