Question
We live west of Chicago and had a bad drought last summer. The tree seemed fine. Also a worker cut one of the larger roots pushing up our driveway. Anyway, this year part of the tree (10%) browned and dropped leaves. Also the tree has put out thousands of cones in the shape of balls. We have not seen this before.
Thanks,
Terry

Answer
Any time you cut the roots of a tree it will react either by dropping some of its leaves or producing fruit. The rooot system is almost a diect inverse to the foliage so if you cut a portion of the roots it is expected that about the same proportion of the foliage is effected. The increase in fruiting is the tree "thinking" that something is wrong and to continue its off spring existance it puts out more fruit (cones) and seed. This is all normal and if the rest of the tree is green and looks ok there is no problem.