Answer:
The number of trees at the begging of the 4-year period was 2560.
Explanation:
Let’s say that x is number of trees at the begging of the first year, we know that for four years the number of trees were incised by 1/4 of the number of trees of the preceding year, so at the end of the first year the number of trees was
, and for the next three years we have that
Start End
Second year
--------------

Third year
-------------

Fourth year
--------------

So the formula to calculate the number of trees in the fourth year is
we know that all of the trees thrived and there were 6250 at the end of 4 year period, then
⇒

Therefore the number of trees at the begging of the 4-year period was 2560.