Johann Heinrich Cotta, also Heinrich von Cotta, (30 October 1763 – 25 October 1844) was a German silviculturist who was a native of Kleine Zillbach, near Wasungen, Thuringia. He was founder of the Royal Saxon Academy of Forestry, in Tharandt, and is known as a pioneer of scientific forestry. He was the father of the geologist Bernhard von Cotta (1808–1879).
Cotta reportedly said of himself:
Initially learning forestry from his father, in 1784–85 Cotta enrolled at the University of Jena, where he studied mathematics, natural sciences and cameralism (public administration). In 1785, he returned to Zillbach to teach forestry at one of the earliest master schools of forestry, with his father. In 1801 he became a member of the forestry college in Eisenach, while continuing his work at Zillbach. During this time his reputation grew, and in 1810 Cotta was appointed director of Forstvermessung und Taxation (Forest Mensuration and Taxation) by Frederick Augustus I of Saxony.
In 1811, he established a forestry school at Tharandt, near Dresden, together with its arboretum, the Forstbotanischer Garten Tharandt, still in existence. The school later would be known as the Royal Saxon Academy of Forestry; and lives on today as site of the Department of Forestry of Dresden University of Technology. The new forestry school attracted students throughout Europe, and in 1813 was visited by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. In 1841, Cotta was given an award by Tsar Nicholas I in recognition of his efforts at Tharandt.
Cotta was a pioneer of modern forestry, and was a catalyst concerning the transition from "timber production" to forestry as a scientific discipline. He was interested in all aspects of forestry, including studies involving long-term seeding, establishment of forested areas, and tree-cutting based on mathematic practices. Cotta's methodology was based on a geometric survey of the forest, where calculations of the wood mass of individual trees as well as the yield of the entire forested region were made. By way of these calculations an estimate for the monetary worth of a forest could be assessed. In 1804 Cotta was the first to suggest the concept of a "volume table", which was a chart that was introduced decades later to aid in the estimation of standing timber volume. In 1816, Cotta wrote:
Cotta also had a keen interest in geology and fossils, and during his career amassed an impressive collection of zoological and botanical fossils. Today, pieces of this collection are kept at Humboldt University of Berlin (Institute for Paleontology), in the museum for natural history in Chemnitz, at the Academy of Mining in Freiberg, in the State Natural History Collections in Dresden and in the Natural History Museum in London.
