Stamen designed a habitat explorer for MPG Ranch, a ten thousand acre private ranch. The explorer is a dynamic system that helps MPG scientists easily communicate about the exciting restoration and other work that they’re doing. 

The purpose of the project is to enable the scientists and researchers working at the Ranch to keep track of their projects in the field. They’ve got a huge piece of property in western Montana, and they need to keep tabs on all the different work that’s happening there in terms of conservation. There are close to 30 scientists and conservationists working to return the land to the way it was before it was used for grazing. Each plot has different kinds of projects happening on it, from heavily wooded summit forests to overgrazed hillsides. The scientists also have a lot of different goals and constraints that they need to track. Before we took the project on together, that information was being tracked by individual departments, and difficult to track.

With the long days that they do out in the field, and with people running around over 10,000 acres, it’s really hard for them all to get together and see what the other groups are working on. But also they have the ranch ownership to think about. They access everything on iPhones from all across the country, and want to be able to quickly take a glance at the ranch and see what’s happening, what’s changed, what’s new.