Gerhard Gottsberger

Gerhard Gottsberger (* 1940 in Judenburg , Austria ) is a German-Austrian scientist and inventor of the Copas method for researching life in tropical tree tops.

Life

Gerhard Gottsberger was born in Judenburg in Austria in 1940. He studied natural sciences and completed his studies with a doctorate to become a Dr. phil. from. His scientific specialty was botany, especially that of the tropical rainforest. He was particularly interested in the animal and plant communities in the tops of tropical rainforests, which had been largely unexplored until then. For this purpose, he first conducted research in Brazil and encountered considerable technical difficulties because the work in the tops of the trees, which were up to 45 meters high, and the difficult way to move from tree to tree there, made the work time-consuming and unproductive. He returned to Germany in 1983 and became professor of botany at the University of Giessen . Here he designed and developed a device, a kind of cable car on three high support masts set in a triangle, with which one could drive through the crowns of the trees and thus observe and classify the living beings of plant and animal species, their living conditions, and the bacteria settled there, could collect and research their habits. His studies were financially secured by the Körber Prize for European Science , which he received in 1996 in the amount of 1.25 million DM. Nevertheless, the full professor for special botany at the University of Ulm and director of the botanical garden and the herbarium of the Ulm University had to wait almost 25 years until his procedure called Copas ( Canopy Operation Permanent Access System ) was implemented, although it was already in 2000 Ulm Botanical Garden the prototype had been erected. The Les Nouragues nature reserve in French Guiana was chosen as the location for the final project . The masts were in place in 2007 and the system was completed in spring 2014, 25 years after the first design by Copas and 18 years after the Körber Foundation award. In September 2014, Gerhard Gottsberger, who has long since retired, officially opened the facility.

Publications (selection)

• Life in the cerrado: A South-American tropical ecosystem , together with Silke Silberbauer-Gottsberger, Ulm
• Life forms and dynamics in tropical forrests , Berlin, 2001.
• Life in the cerrado: Pollination and seed dispersal , Ulm, 2006.
• The seedpod gum of Parkia pendula (Fabaceae) as a deadly trap for vertebrates (electronic resource), together with Daniel Piechowski, Ulm, 2009.

Web links

• Literature by and about Gerhard Gottsberger in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Kürschner's German Scholars Calendar, year 2009.
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Der Spiegel: No. 45 of November 3, 2014, article Der Wipfelstürmer , pages 128 ff.