On the vertex-arboricity of planar graphs (Q2427551)

The vertex-arboricity \(\alpha(G)\) of a graph \(G\) is the minimum number of parts in a partition of the vertices so that each part induces a forest. It is known that \(\alpha(G) \leq 3\) for any planar graph \(G\). In this paper the authors show that \(\alpha(G) \leq 2\) whenever \(G\) is planar and has no 4-cycles. They also show that \(\alpha(G) \leq 2\) if \(G\) is planar and any two triangles are of distance at least 3. The paper contains several nice conjectures about vertex-arboricity.