Edge arboricity : Do we need equitabilility ?

Abstract

In this paper we study a new variant of graph arboricity, which requires all the forests to have the same number of edges (up to a difference of 1). We prove that the new variant, which we call equitable arboricity, is equivalent to ordinary arboricity. In other words we show that any arborescent decomposition of a graph can be transformed into an equitable one without modifying the number of used forests.

A colleague just informed me that the result is an obvious consequence of the exchange axiom in matroïds