> Topping puts the tree on senescence pathway and gives the ecology time to transition from alive to dead and dying.

Is this why the council recently topped a tree on my road that's been breaking up the pavement? We thought they were cutting it down since they dug up all the tarmac around it, but they just knocked the top off, taking something like 98% of the leaves with it, and then put fresh tarmac over the exposed roots. We've been puzzling over that for a week...