Stephen J. Dinsmore was appointed interim director for the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, effective July 1, 2021, upon the retirement of Mark A. Rasmussen.
Professor Dinsmore chairs the Department of Natural Resource Ecology and Management in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Iowa State University. He joined the Iowa State faculty in 2005 and also helps lead the State of Iowa’s Multiple Species Inventory and Monitoring Program.
His research centers on the intersection of avian ecology and population biology and focuses on applied issues related to specific management questions important to local, state, and federal natural resource management agencies. It also contributes to other natural resource disciplines through methodological advances.
His research program has emphasized three primary areas. The first focuses on measures of avian reproductive success, an area where he has played an active role in developing rigorous methods for estimating nest survival. Much of this work has focused on providing estimates of nest survival and understanding how they are influenced by extrinsic factors; however, he is also interested in broader questions such as the evolution of mating systems and understanding parental investment in reproduction. His second primary research area deals with modeling avian demography. He is interested in management or conservation questions and use studies of avian demography (e.g., estimates of survival and population size) as tools to address these questions. His third primary research area deals with the influence of habitat on populations. He is interested in working with natural resource agencies to understand the implications for bird populations of alternative habitat management practices.
More at Stephen J. Dinsmore’s Lab website with links to his publications.