Dr Roger Hnatiuk ‘The National Arboretum: How big are the trees? How fast are they growing?'

Roger will talk about the sampling strategies for assessing tree growth at the National Arboretum. Roger has found it most satisfying to make it possible for people to work together to produce major national and international projects that individuals working alone couldn’t do. Examples of his efforts have been: to see that the Friends and Volunteers programs were established at ANBG, the establishment of the Australian Plants as Bonsai Study Group, the establishment of the National Bonsai and Penjing Collection of Australia. Currently, he is engaging volunteers in measuring the performance of the trees, recording frogs, carrying out a stocktake of the Forests and making a collection of voucher specimens of plants at the National Arboretum Canberra.

After his tertiary studies in Canada and the Australian National University, Dr Roger Hnatiuk’s career included the Directorship and Senior Staff Scientist positions at the Royal Society of London’s Aldabra Research Station, Research Scientist at the Western Australian Herbarium where he studied the species-rich shrublands of the southwest and research on the genus Eremaea. He was Assistant Director Biogeographic Information then Flora at the Australian Biological Resources Study, then was the second Director of the Australian National Botanic Gardens, before he became Leader and Senior Principal Research Scientist of the Forests Program at the Bureau of Rural Sciences. He is now a Citizen Scientist.