Welcome to Ozark Natural Science Center.

I'm Rose Brown, the executive director.

And I'm Liz Hill, the program manager.

At ONSC, we connect people with nature by offering immersive experiences in the Ozark wilderness.

Our mission is to enhance the understanding, appreciation and stewardship of the Ozark natural environment.

Today, we're going to show you some of the things we do in our programs.

We're going to go on some field investigations, and we're going to learn about our box turtle research that we do here and how we track the turtles down.

And we're going to go to the dining hall and see how our meals work and our Food for Thought program, which is how we share about conserving our resources and trying not to waste food.

So come on, let's go.

(upbeat music) Not only do we eat great food in the dining hall here at ONSC, but we also use it as an opportunity to teach about conservation of energy and resources and help us learn how to do better about not wasting food.

(upbeat music) We have our full amount of wasted food combined here and we're going to weigh it.

All right.

So let's see how we did for our first breakfast.

- It is five pounds.

- Five pounds and how many ounces?

- 11.

- Five pounds, 11 ounces.

Do you think we can do better at future meals?

- Yes.

- Hopefully this gives you just a little bit more to think about when you are making those choices, putting food on your plate, and why we might want to really be extra careful about not wasting any of that food.

The Smith Education Building is where we have classes like Dots and Creek Critters.

We have a museum room in there too, full of really cool specimens, and today we're going to learn about our box turtle research project and how we do radio tracking.

Out here at Ozark Natural Science Center, we have a research study going on about three- toed box turtles.

And when we find a new turtle, we get to go through the process of bringing it into our research.

We make some measurements of the turtle, so we measure its weight and the height of its shell.

So that top part is called the carapace, the dome part, and then the plastron is the flat part on the bottom.

And we also measure the width and the length of the shell, and then we get to put a transmitter on it and try to track that turtle down later so that we can find out more about where it goes, what its home range is, what it eats and all sorts of cool things about that turtle.

I'm happy we get to let you go.

We're going to take it back to the field where we found it last night, put it back where it was so it can carry on the rest of its little happy life hopefully.

Hope you do well, carry on your journey.

We'll check up on you and try and find out where you go with the transmitter.

One of the best parts of our field trips and camps out here at Ozark Natural Science Center is our hikes.

And we call them field investigations for a reason because we are not just hiking straight through, we stop and investigate all sorts of things that people find along the way.

We're listening for the birds.

We are feeling and smelling different plants that we know are safe too.

And we are investigating all sorts of other things that people find along the way.

It could be a gall from an insect laid on laying eggs on a leaf or a mushroom growing out of the ground or mosses or lichens on the trees.

We get out our ONSC field journals and look up things, try to identify what we've got and mark off things that we have found in here.

What have you got back there?

- It's a moth.

- Oh my gosh, it's so tiny.

So that's pretty neat.

You guys are about to get to see one of our best views at the Science Center.

We call this spot Wishing Rock.

So you could take a minute as well to close your eyes and make a wish if you want to.

Thanks for joining us today.

We hope you had a blast and we hope to see you out here soon.