Outreach & Service

The Sala Lab actively advances discovery and understanding while (1) promoting teaching, training and learning, (2) broadening the participation of underrepresented groups, (3) enhancing education infrastructure and (4) broadly disseminating results to enhance scientific understanding.

Asombro Institute for Science Education

We work with the Asombro Institute for Science Education (AISE), which is a non-profit organization that provides award-winning science education to more than 19,000 children and 1,500 adults annually in southern New Mexico and western Texas and with the Jornada LTER. We have established a demonstration project within the Chihuahuan Desert Nature Park, which includes three rainout shelters and three control plots, a field trip activity station that allows students to learn about the potential effects of climate variability in the region and to collect data on shelter, control and irrigated plots. We actively participate in the Desert Data Jam where we share data from our project to have students begin to compare their own findings to the larger project. The Desert Data Jam challenges middle school students to find interesting ways to present scientific data to nonscientist audiences. Other interpretive signs highlighting local research on vegetation dynamics, geology, archaeology, and animal adaptations have been on site since 2006. These signs are viewed by approximately 7,000 visitors who come to the Nature Park each year.

Other Synergistic Activities

In addition to educational outreach, Osvaldo Sala has served a number of organizations, including non-governmental scientific organizations, governmental advisory boards, and other various associations. Below are some of his service activities. For a full list of Osvaldo’s professional service activities, please view his CV.

Non-governmental scientific organizations:
Chair External Advisory Board, School of Global Environmental Sustainability, Colorado State University, 2012-
Co-Director South American Institute for Resilience and Sustainability Studies, 2007-16
Jury Ramón Margalef Award, 2008-11
The Nature Conser­vancy, Member Science Council 2005-07
President, SCOPE, Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment, 2005-09
Ecological Society of America, Governing Board 2002-04

Governmental advisory boards:
National Science Foundation, LTER National Advisory Board, 2010-13
Advisory Committee for Environmental Research and Education, 2007-09
Ecosystems panel 2005-07

Editorial Boards
Global Change Biology Blackwell Scientific (2003-05)
Oecologia, Springer Verlag (1994-05)
Ecosystems, Springer Verlag (1997-05)

Member of Scientific Steering Committees:
SCOPE Biofuels Project, 2007-10
International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP), 1994-96
Global Change and Terrestrial Ecosystems (GCTE), a core project of IGBP, 1991-99
Diversitas, an International Programme of Biodiversity Science, 1995-01
SCOPE, Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment, 1998-01
Leader, GCTE Focus 4, Global Change and Ecological Complexity, 1994-99