Loss Lab
Global Change Ecology & Management
Scott R. Loss
Professor & Bollenbach Chair in Wildlife Management
Dept. of Natural Resource Ecology & Management
Oklahoma State University
Outreach
Public outreach and extension are important aspects of our work because these activities help increase public understanding of science and ensure research findings reach potential end-users. We are always happy to consider requests to give public presentations and programs to non-academic groups; examples of our outreach and extension activities are pictured below.
As part of an NSF grant focused on modeling migratory bird responses to climate change and other global changes, we presented an educational program about bird migration at Will Rogers Elementary School in Stillwater. Top: Scott live streams a bird banding demonstration to 2nd graders after he gave an in-person presentation about migratory birds and the threats they face; Bottom: Loss Lab postdoctoral researcher Maria Belotti and MS student Maria Bleitz lead a discussion about migratory birds as part of the program.
We have done extensive local, national, and international outreach surrounding our research on the issue of bird-window collisions. Top: Scott gives an interview with an Oklahoma City news station about OSU's efforts to make glass more bird-friendly; Bottom: Loss Lab MS student Riley Lawson was featured in an outreach video on the same project.
In August 2024, Scott had the amazing opportunity to travel to Shenzhen, China to participate in an Urban Biodiversity and Sustainability Conference where he presented the North American perspective on the issue of bird-window collisions. The audience for this talk included conservation practitioners, as well as municipal policymakers from Shanghai, Shenzhen and other cities who were considering options to make China's cities more bird-friendly.
Students from Stillwater's Highland Park Elementary School show the European earthworms and Asian jumping earthworms they sampled from their school's grounds; led by Loss Lab postdoc Shishir Paudel, we taught a 4-week program on invasive earthworms and the scientific method to the school's science club.
We have mentored two different FIRST LEGO League middle school teams with projects on bird-window collisions (one from Norman, Oklahoma and one from Minnetonka, Minnesota). Left: Loss Lab grad students Sirena Lao and Corey Riding - along with Scott Loss and frequent Loss Lab collaborator Dr. Tim O'Connell - with the Oklahoma team during their visit to OSU to present their project and learn how to monitor bird collisions and measure building lighting (right).
As part of our outreach activities, we also regularly conduct media interviews (see Media Coverage) and seek to disseminate our research through non-academic outlets. Here, Loss Lab graduate student Megan Roselli (left) conducts an interview on our tick-borne disease urban ecology study with the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation and grad student Yevgeniya Malyutina (right) does an interview about invasive earthworm effects on prairies for the Oklahoma Gardening TV show.