John Lawrance Nicholls, MNZM BSc (NZ), 2 December 1920 – 19 August 2010

The passing of John Nicholls in Rotorua on 19 August 2010 marks the end of an era in New Zealand forest ecology. John was intimately involved in the National Forest Survey of 1946–55 and oversaw the subsequent Ecological Survey (1960–67) that filled gaps in the original survey. Though undertaken initially to assess remaining timber volumes, these initiatives also acquired a vast amount of ecological data. Through them and his own thirst for knowledge, John gained unparalleled insights into the compositional variation of New Zealand forests that were later to prove invaluable in his career in forest mapping, reserve designation, and biogeographic classification.