Paul Seibert

Paul Seibert (born February 18, 1921 in Dorsten ; † June 14, 1997 ) was a German forest scientist, vegetation expert and university professor.

Military service and studies

After graduating from high school in 1939, Seibert was a soldier in an infantry regiment that was deployed in Holland, Norway and Russia. After being wounded in Russia, he began studying forest sciences at the forestry department of the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg in the military hospital , where he continued his studies after the war and passed the forestry exam in 1947. He then wrote a dissertation on The Douglas Fir in the Freiburg City Forest , with which he received his doctorate under Eduard Zentgraf . After the forestry traineeship , which he did in Salem , among other places , he was appointed forest assessor in 1950 .

practical activity

In 1950 he got a job as a scientific assistant at the Federal Institute for Vegetation Mapping in Stolzenau , where, under the guidance of Reinhold Tüxen, he worked intensively on vegetation mapping in forests in various regions of the Federal Republic of Germany.

In 1954 Seibert became an employee of the Bavarian Water Management Administration, where he devoted himself to " applied plant sociology " by assessing landscape maintenance and landscape engineering interventions during planning and implementation and thus developing the basis for near-natural hydraulic engineering. The focus of his work was, among other things, near-natural bank protection and water regulation as well as engineering biology . His work was not limited to practice. Seibert documented his mappings and the knowledge he gained from them. The following works are examples of his publications from this period:

• "The plant communities in the nature reserve ' Pupplinger Au '" (1958)
• "The floodplain vegetation on the Isar north of Munich and its influence by humans" (1962)
• "The vegetation map as a tool for mapping slopes at risk of slipping" (1969)

The "Overview map of the natural vegetation areas of Bavaria 1: 500,000" published by Seibert in 1968 was groundbreaking. With this work, a map was presented for the first time, in which environmental factors relevant to agricultural and forestry production can be seen on the basis of vegetation units.

Seibert presented the thesis on "floodplain vegetation on the Isar" at the Biological Faculty of the University of Munich as a habilitation thesis and began lecturing in vegetation science and geobotany in 1963 as a private lecturer at the Institute for Systematic Botany at the University of Munich.

Research and Teaching

In 1969, Seibert was appointed professor of vegetation science and landscape management at the Forest Science Faculty of the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, where he expanded his teaching and research beyond vegetation science to include the fields of landscape management , landscape planning and engineering biology. With the professorship of Paul Seibert, the teaching and research area of ​​vegetation science was institutionalized for the first time at the University of Munich.

Bavaria and southern Germany

At the university, Seibert built on his previous activity, researching Bavarian vegetation, especially forest communities. He was commissioned to select suitable areas for the planned designation of natural forest reserves in Bavaria, to record vegetation studies and to create the basis for future studies in these areas. Based on Seibert's results, the Bavarian State Forestry Administration placed a total of 135 forest areas under special protection.

The mapping of the real vegetation in the Bavarian Forest National Park was also fundamental, which was carried out primarily by Rainer Petermann under the direction of Seibert. With the help of the vegetation recordings and the mapping, it was possible to gain additional valuable information about the flora and fauna of the national park. One result of the work was a list of all plants and plant communities found in the area up to 1973, and a herbarium with over 350 species of higher plants and the most widespread mosses was compiled for the national park administration.

Seibert's part in the MAB 6 project “The Influence of Humans on High Mountain Ecosystems”, which was carried out within the framework of the UNESCO program “ Man and the Biosphere ” (MAB) and for which around 1978 with the Alpine and National Park area, was also of far-reaching importance Berchtesgaden a first area proposal was to be worked on. In 1979 Seibert presented a “feasibility study” for the MAB 6 project “The Influence of Humans on High Mountain Ecosystems”. The content of the study was the development of a comprehensive long-term research concept that enabled the integration of the research tasks of Berchtesgaden and the special research priorities of the national park administration in the MAB-6 program. Furthermore, a work plan for multidisciplinary research including a synthesis should be drawn up, taking into account ongoing and final research projects. Seibert was subsequently a member of the national committee for the UNESCO program “Man and the Biosphere” for several years and was coordinator of the MAB-6 project “The influence of humans on high mountain ecosystems”.

For the 2nd edition of the "South German Plant Societies " founded and published by Erich Oberdorfer , Seibert has taken on the processing of the " Vaccinio-Piceetea ", the " Erico-Pinetea ", the " Salicetea purpureae " and the " Alno-Padion " association.

South America

During his work at the university, Seibert's main areas of work were vegetation science and landscape management in Bavaria, which he expanded through research in South America. The impetus for this was that shortly after his appointment as professor Seibert was entrusted with the estate of Kurt Hueck , as well as the invitation of the Argentine research community to Latin America. This gave Seibert the opportunity to extend his research to the American subcontinent. From 1969 to 1989, Seibert was given the opportunity to explore the subcontinent on research trips from Venezuela in the north to Tierra del Fuego in the south and from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean and from the coasts to heights of over 5000 m.

His research on South America led to the publication of a "Vegetation Map of South America" ​​in 1972, which was based on a draft map by Hueck, who died in 1965 and which gives an overview of the natural potential of South America. The map was found as a pencil draft in Hueck's estate and was intended as a supplement to his book “Die Forests Südamerikas”, which appeared after his death.

From 1974 the research of the vegetation and landscape of the residential area of ​​the Kallawaya Indians was a further research focus of Seibert, with which he founded the interdisciplinary research project of the German Research Foundation "Influence of humans on high mountain ecosystems in the residential area of ​​the Kallawaya, Bolivian Andes" and together for many years coordinated with the Bonn geographer Wilhelm Lauer .

In 1982 Seibert published the "Carta de Vegetación de la región de El Bolsón", in which the vegetation conditions of the southern Cordillera around the city of " El Bolsón " in the province of Río Negro in the Argentine department of Bariloche is presented. This map is still used today as the basis for numerous ecological studies in Argentina.

With the plant-sociological vegetation mapping according to the Braun-Blanquet method , Seibert made a significant contribution to the project "Transecta Botánica de la Patagonia Austral". The comprehensive map work published by Osvaldo Boelcke (1920–1990), David Moresby Moore (* 1933) and Fidel Antonio Roig (* 1922) consists of the vegetation maps edited by Seibert on a scale of 1: 250,000 as well as maps of geology, on the precipitation conditions and geomorphology in each case on a scale of 1: 1,000,000. Seibert's collaboration on a vegetation map of the Chaco should also be mentioned .

Further activities in South America consisted of research trips, for example from Belo Horizonte through the basin of the Rio São Francisco to Recife , the capital of the state of Pernambuco in northeast Brazil. Seibert carried out investigations in the savannahs of Humaitá , an area in former river beds, with infertile, water-permeable Latisol soils, on which only grass-dominated plant communities that are adapted to the drought can grow. He also explored the vegetation in the area of ​​the Antillanca volcano in the central Chilean part of the Andes.

Garb by Paul Seibert in the Munich North Cemetery

In addition to field work in South America, there were also times of lecturing, of which the seminars in Campos do Jordão are remarkable. The place is the highest city in Brazil, which is known for the half-timbered houses built in the Swiss style.

The synopsis of his research results in South America was reflected in his last publication, the “Color Atlas South America. Landscape and Vegetation ”, published in 1996, a year before his death.

Paul Seibert retired in 1987. His successor at the University of Munich is Anton Fischer .

Functions and memberships

• Member of the Advisory Board for Nature Conservation and Landscape Management of the Federal Ministry for Food, Agriculture and Forests
• Member of the nature conservation advisory board at the Bavarian State Ministry for State Development and Environmental Issues
• Member of the national committee for the UNESCO program "Man and Biosphere"
• Chairman of the Bavarian Botanical Society
• Honorary member of the floristic-sociological working group
• Founding member and in the first few years co-chair of the German Society for Tropical Ecology

literature

• Anton Fischer: Paul Seibert 70 years old. In: Tuexenia. 11, Göttingen 1991, pp. 13-16 (with a list of the writings of Paul Seibert).
• Anton Fischer: Paul Seibert (1921–1997). In: Tuexenia. 17, Göttingen 1997, pp. 15-17.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ W. Lippert: Paul Seibert 1921–1997 (PDF; 445 kB), Ber.Bayer.Bot.Ges., 68, 175–177, December 31, 1997.
2. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from January 24, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
3. ↑ [1]  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
4. ^ Paul Seibert: Feasibility study for the MAB project 6 “The influence of humans on high mountain ecosystems”. Chair of Landscape Ecology at the Technical University of Munich 1979 (unpublished)
5. ^ Theo Müller , Paul Seibert and Erich Oberdorfer: South German Plant Societies, Part 4: Forests and Bushes, 2 volumes (A. Text volume, B. Table volume) 2nd, heavily edited edition 1992. Jena. ISBN 3-334-60385-7
6. ^ German Society for Tropical Ecology eV; gtö-Rundbrief, No. 23, December 1997
7. ↑ Kurt Hueck and Paul Seibert: Vegetation map of South America / Mapa de la vegetación de America del Sur. M 1: 8,000,000. Bilingual explanatory text. Vegetation monographs of the individual large areas, Vol. 2a Stuttgart 1972. 69 pp. ISBN 3-437-20067-4
8. ^ Paul Seibert: Carta de vegetación de la región de El Bolsón, Río Negro y su aplicación a la planificación del uso de la tierra. Fundación para la educación, la ciencia y la cultura. Documenta Phytosociologica 2. 120 pp. Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1982
9. ^ O. Boelcke, DM Moore, FA Roig (Ed.): Transecta botánica de la Patagonia austral. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (Argentina), Instituto de la Patagonia (Chile), Royal Society (Gran Bretaña). 733 pp. ISBN 950-43-0415-X
10. ^ Paul Seibert: Color Atlas South America. Landscapes and Vegetation. Stuttgart 1996. 288 pp. ISBN 3-8001-3357-1

Web links

• Literature by and about Paul Seibert in the catalog of the German National Library