User:Viriditas/Dieter Mueller-Dombois

Dieter Mueller-Dombois is a German-American plant ecologist and botanist.

Life and work
Mueller-Dombois is the son of Johanna Dombis and the historian Georg Müller, and grew up near Bielefeld, Germany. He attended the University of Hohenheim, and received a diplom in agronomy before moving to Canada and attending the University of British Columbia. After receiving his B.S. in Forestry, he continued on to earn a PhD in Forest Ecology in 1960.

From 1958 to 1963 he worked as a Forest Research Officer for the Canadian Department of Forestry in Winnipeg, Manitoba, before taking a tenure-track position at the University of Hawaii. He became a full professor in 1972, and has been emeritus since 1990.

Areas of research

 * Ecological systems
 * Ecological changes after environmental disruption
 * Development of forest ecosystems
 * Geobiology and plant ecosystems of Hawaii

Together with the American botanist Francis Raymond Fosberg, Mueller-Dombois wrote Vegetation of the Tropical Pacific Islands (1998), which is now a standard text covering the plant ecology of pacific islands.

Awards

 * 1981: Gifford Pinchot Award of the U.S. Forest Service for Forest Ecology Research in Hawaii
 * 1982: Double Merit Award for Distinguished Service at the University of Hawaii
 * 1988: Fujio Matsuda Scholarship, University of Hawaii
 * 2000: Reinhold-Tüxen Prize
 * 2004: Honorable degree from the Technical University of Cottbus

Selected works

 * Aims and Methods of Vegetation Ecology (1974), with Heinz Ellenberg
 * Island Ecosystems: Biological Organization in Selected Hawaiian Communities (1981), with K.W. Bridges, and H. L. Carson
 * Vegetation of the Tropical Pacific Islands (1998), with F.R. Fosberg
 * PABITRA Methods Book: Biodiversity Assessment of Tropical Island Ecosystems (2005), with K.W. Bridges and C. Daehler
 * Hawaii, the Fires of Life: Five Decades of Vegetation Development in Volcanoland (2007)