Andreas Roloff

Andreas Roloff (born 15 May 1955 in Bremen) is a German forest scientist.
He specializes in the fields of forest botany and dendrology. He held a professorship for these two fields from 1990 to 1993 at the Georg-August University of Göttingen and since 1994 the chair for forest botany at the Tharandt Forestry University, specializing in forest sciences at the Technical University of Dresden.
Early life and education.
Roloff grew up in Bremen, where he also attended school and passed his Abitur in 1974 at the old grammar school. He then did community service and then worked as a parenting assistant in the special education children's home for difficult-to-educate children and adolescents in Rosdorf - Obernjesa near Göttingen. After he started in 1976 at the Georg-August University of Göttingen to study psychology.
After passing the intermediate diploma in 1979, however, Roloff switched to the forest sciences department. He completed this course in 1984 with a degree in forestry. He then stopped at the Forest Sciences Department of the University, worked as a research assistant at the Institute of Forest Botany and conducted research at the same time for his dissertation morphology of crown development of Fagus sylvatica with special reference may innovative changes, which he in 1986 on Forest Science Department for Dr. forest. PhDhas been. The work, in which Roloff showed how European beeches can make use of the airspace, met with a great response from the forestry experts - not least against the background of the debates about the so-called forest decline. Based on this knowledge, a widely used key to addressing growth anomalies in beech was created. Für seine Forschungsleistung wurde Roloff zum Jahresende mit dem Thurn- und Taxis-Förderpreis für die Forstwissenschaft 1986 ausgezeichnet.</ref> At the end of the year, Roloff was awarded the Thurn and Taxis Prize for Forest Science in 1986 for his research achievements. At the award ceremony at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, its President Wulf Steinmann said:
Professor in Göttingen and Dresden / Tharandt.
This scientific success confirmed Roloff in his decision to embark on a scientific career. He stayed at the Institute for Forest Botany until 1987, before moving to the thematically closely related Institute for Silviculture in the department as a research assistant until 1990.
He extended the research methods he used on the common beech to other tree species. In 1988 he qualified as a professor at the forest science department of the University of Göttingen with a thesis on crown development and vitality assessment of selected tree species of the moderate latitudes and received the license to teach forest botany. He then worked as a research assistant at the Institute for Silviculture at the University of Göttingen until 1990, which also included teaching responsibility for forest vegetation science.
In 1990 Roloff was appointed to the Chair of Forest Botany and Dendrology at the Institute for Forest Botany at the University of Göttingen. This also included the scientific management of the Forest Botanical Garden at the University of Göttingen, with Andreas Bärtels supporting him as technical director.
In 1993, Roloff accepted a chair for forest botany at the forest sciences department at the Dresden University of Technology in Tharandt, where he has been teaching and researching since 1994. This professorship is linked to the position of director of the Institute for Forest Botany and Forest Zoology and the Tharandt Forest Botanical Garden of the TU Dresden, one of the world's oldest and largest scientific wood collections. He is also a member of the board of directors of the Institute for Dendrochronology, Tree Care and Wood Management Tharandt eV ( Dendro Institute for short ), which is closely connected to the TU. His current work focuses on drought stress reactions and adaptation, choice of tree species, tree aging and dealing with invasive tree species.
Scientific achievements.
In the early years of his academic career, Roloff brought more attention to the field of morphology and dendrology within forest botany and derived important findings for practical applications. His years of research in this area led to the standard work Baumkronen - Understanding and Practical Meaning of a Complex Natural Phenomenon, published in 2001 . In trees - phenomena of adaptation and optimization / Trees - Phenomena of Adaptation and Optimization(2004), which was also aimed at dendrological laypeople, he focused on the holistic view of the tree as a living being and its survival strategies. After the forest dying debate had calmed down in the forest scientific community and was replaced by the assumption of climate change with worldwide dramatic effects, Roloff has dealt with tree-biological questions on this complex of topics in his research.
In addition, Roloff, who has regularly worked as a tree expert for courts since the 1980s, also dealt intensively with the topics of tree care and the so-called urban forestry. City trees, in particular their biology, use and care, have been one of his main research areas since the mid-2000s . [6] For this purpose, Roloff has also successfully spun threads into practice and developed street tree concepts with several cities (including Jena, Hamburg, Erfurt). Together with Detlef Thiel, head of the Office for Urban Greenery and Waste Management in Dresden, he is the initiator and organizer of the Dresden City Tree Daysthat have been held alternately in Dresden or Tharandt since 2007. Since 2016, he has headed the tree control guidelines committee of the FLL, which revises the regulations for road safety control of trees. The new edition will appear in 2020.
He is also a speaker at many other advanced training events in the field of tree biology and tree care. He gives these in addition to his regular academic teaching duties for forest scientists, landscape architects and geographers. [6] Roloff is also involved in the academic self-administration of the TU Dresden, was Dean of Studies for Forest Sciences from 1994 to 2003 and has been chairman of the examination board since 2018.
In addition to numerous publications in a wide variety of specialist publications, Roloff is also the author or co-author of several books. In addition to those already mentioned, he wrote together with Andreas Bärtels the flora of the woody plants, which were primarily intended for forestry and horticultural practice (first time in 1996 ). Since 1997, Roloff has also been the publisher, together with Horst Weisgerber, Ulla M. Lang and Bernd Stimm, of the encyclopedia of woody plants and their extracts in book form, founded by Peter Schütt and distributed worldwide . At the same time he has also worked on numerous monographs in the encyclopedia himself. He is also editor of the Contributions to Forest Sciences and the textbook Tree Care - Tree Biological Basics and Application (2008/2013).
Personal life.
Roloff is married and has four grown children. He lives with his wife in Diera-Zehren.
Work.
together with Andreas Bärtels: Woods. Purpose, origin and areas of life, properties and use . (Garden flora, volume 1.) Ulmer, Stuttgart-Hohenheim 1996 (2nd, completely revised edition under the title Flora of the Woods. Determination, properties and use . With a winter identification key by Bernd *Schulz. Ulmer, Stuttgart-Hohenheim 2006; 3rd. , corrected edition, Ulmer, Stuttgart-Hohenheim 2008; 4th, completely revised and expanded edition, Ulmer, Stuttgart-Hohenheim 2014; ).
together with Ulrich Pietzarka: The Tharandt Forest Botanical Garden . Atelier am Forstgarten, Tharandt 1996
New edition as a three-volume work by the TU Dresden publishing house:
together with Klaus Klugmann: Causes and dynamics of oak branch cracks . (Tharandt forest science articles, volume 1). Forest sciences at TU Dresden, Tharandt 1997.