We mourn the loss of Prof. Dr. Helmut Lieth

One of the world's best known ecologists, visionary and pioneer of the environmental system sciences passed away on 16 April 2015

Dr. Lieth’s research work focused further on environmental influences on plant growth, particularly how low light limits plant growth. He also became interested in how plants are distributed globally in relation to the local environments. By 1960 this had resulted in a seminal cartographic work, the Climate Diagram World Atlas. This very large volume quantified the local climates throughout the countries and regions of the world, graphically illustrating for each location the patterns of temperature and rainfall. The global nature of this work was of great interest in the scientific community, so that the start of the 1960's began his rise to international prominence as a scientist who understood ecology on a global scale.

Obituary of the University of Osnabrück

The man and his life for global ecology

Friedrich Heinrich Helmut Lieth was born December 16, 1925 on a farm in the village of Duerscheid in the state of Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany and lived there until his parents Heinrich and Josefine moved to Gotha, in the state of Thueringen. Growing up on a farm introduced him to a large variety of plants and early on he observed how the environment influenced where plants grow, and how farmers manipulated the environment to grow plants.

At the age of 14 the family moved to Gelsenkirchen in northern Germany where he attended high school. This was a formative time where the world began to increasingly embrace the then-new science of Ecology and Helmut became interested in environmental biology, particularly botany.

In 1943 he was drafted into military service where he was active as communications specialist in the navy. Directly after the end of World War II, he moved back to Duerscheid and began his university education at the University of Cologne while again living on the family farm. During this time he married Maria Magdalene Roth who was part of a large farming family in the area. His studies and interests were now firmly focused on environmental botany.

1954 to1955 were marked by his father’s passing as well as the birth of a daughter Margot and a son Johann Heinrich, as well as his departure from Cologne, to the University of Hohenheim near Stuttgart, Germany. He and Magdalene had a son Erich in 1958 and a son Armin in 1959.

In 1966 he moved his family to Chapel Hill, North Carolina to take a professorship in Ecology in the Department of Botany at the University of North Carolina. At this time he began to use the new computational tools that were becoming available. He leveraged his knowledge of mathematical modeling and his deep understanding of plant responses to global climate to develop models to show how plant growth globally in relation to temperature and rainfall. Although computers generally had few graphics tools at that time, he none-the-less was able to generate large global maps using conventional printers. This work demonstrated the power of layering model predictions onto maps of environmental data, an area which today is known as GIS (Graphical Information Systems).

During the 1970s he carried out a project to document the onset of spring in the eastern USA by noting the exact dates on which two shrubs (Dogwood and Redbud) began flowering. This too was mapped to show how the onset of spring progresses northward, showing that this was a matter of complex plant responses to their environment, rather than simply latitude or day-length. This research lead to his1974 publication of the book “Phenology and Seasonality Modeling”.

Editing books became a passion for Dr. Lieth. In this time as he took on numerous book projects in which he brought colleagues from all over the world together to unite their respective expertise in several book series, with each volume focusing on a specific area of vegetation science.

During the mid 1970s he began to explore the possibility to moving back to Germany and in 1977 took a professorship at the newly formed University of Osnabrueck where he would be a leader in developing biology, botany and ecology programs. He took the lead in developing the Botanical Garden out of an old unused quarry near the university. Much of his research in this time leveraged the use of computers for data management and modeling, to gain better understanding of how plants respond to their environment on regional and global scales.

From the 1970's through the 1990s he was active in many societies, in some as the primary leader. This, as well as his seminal research publications, and his many editing projects, made him well known throughout the field of Ecology. He travelled extensively during this time presenting lectures, chairing meetings, and coordinating collaborative research projects, thus further cementing his prominence as a leading international ecologist. His research during this time included salinity responses of plants and how the elemental composition of plants was affected by environment.

With retirement in 1993, he continued to edit books and to collaborate on projects. During this time he was traveling extensively between Osnabrueck and Duerscheid where he had chosen to retire in the old farmhouse in which he was born. In 2000, he finalized his move to Duerscheid where he continued to work on manuscripts until suffering from a stroke in 2009. His first wife, Maria Magdalene Lieth, preceded him in death earlier in 2009.

Dr Helmut Lieth passed away during the night of April 16 2015. He is survived by his wife Marina Lieth and their daughter Masha Lieth. He is also survived by his daughter Margot Lieth of Marbach a. Neckar, Germany. In Davis, California he is survived by his son Johann Heinrich (Heiner) and Sharyn Lieth. In Chapel Hill, NC he is survived by Erich Lieth and Marya Ilgen-Lieth, as well as Armin and Amanda Lieth. Also surviving are 11 grandchildren and 3 great-grandchildren.