Should I remove or save my shingle oak?
Shingle Oak isn't a habitual problem species, so a sound one is usually worth an opinion before it comes out. Despite smooth, unlobed, laurel-like leaves that look nothing like an oak, this is a red-oak-group species — the single most important fact about the tree. Red group means full oak wilt susceptibility and death within a single season, and homeowners (and occasionally crews) misread it as a non-oak and cut it in June.
How to tell which one you've got
Oak wilt decline is fast and distinctive: leaves bronze from the tip and outer margin inward, then drop while still partly green, and a full crown can go bare in a matter of weeks. Slow, patchy thinning spread over several years is a completely different problem — usually compaction or root stress, and often treatable — so the speed of leaf loss is the diagnostic that separates stressed from dying.
The structural question
The wood itself is strong and it is not prone to shattering. Its specific Indiana failure mode is ice loading on the marcescent leaves: a crown still full of dead foliage catches far more ice than a bare oak, and shingle oaks lose whole scaffold limbs in glaze events that leave neighboring bare-crowned oaks untouched.
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