Mountain Studies Institute

A nonprofit organization

$4,015 raised by 14 donors

13% complete

$30,000 Goal

You can make a difference in the San Juan Mountains
Why donate to Mountain Studies Institute? Together we're connecting communities to science people can use to face our most pressing environmental challenges. As an independent research and education center, your donations allow us to pursue locally-relevant research, provide educational programs to students, build and maintain collaborative natural resource management, and monitor changes on our landscape. A small snapshot of the impact we're having with your help:

  • Eight million acres of forest managed through collaborative efforts
  • Over 3,400 people engaged in environmental education and stewardship initiatives
  • Eleven years of aquatic insect research to measure changes in water quality after fire, pollution events, and restoration
  • 12+ watersheds in the San Juan Mountains benefitting from restoration and monitoring of rivers, wetlands, forests, and wildlife


Project Highlights

Burrows Fen Restoration 


A fen is a type of wetland that forms peat and is fed by groundwater. It is one of the most threatened and sensitive ecosystems on the planet and also one of the most important, providing water retention and filtration, wildfire refuge, wildlife habitat storing twice as much carbon as all the world's forests while only making up a fraction of the land surface. 

Initial restoration work began this summer on the Burrows Fen to restore those critical functions, but the work is far from over, and Burrows is far from the only fen that needs help. Thanks to your donations, we can restore more of these rare and beautiful mountain gems as well as other degraded ecosystems in the future.

Pika Monitoring

Photo by Cody Looman 
Citizen Scientists hike in search for Pika

The EEEP of a pika is so intimately tied to the mountain environments that we hardly bat an eye. That connection to the mountains is not an idle observation, but a window into the health of our alpine ecosystems as climate change continues to transform our world. Warmer temperatures push the pikas ever higher until there's literally nowhere left to go.

We empower citizen scientists to monitor pika and provide data that can reveal patterns in their numbers and the urgency with which we need to protect them. Your donations help maintain this and other important citizen science research about our mountains.

A New Perspective of Forest Management

With MSI as the coordinator, the San Juan Headwaters Forest Health Partnership hosted a birding and forestry field trip to learn how bird monitoring and consideration of birds can create a healthier forest. When changes occur in the forest, such as wildfire, prescribed burning, climate change or our management actions, birds let us know how they were impacted and what those changes mean for a thriving forest community.

We convened community members, natural resource managers, industry professionals, and local recreation groups who gained a new, more holistic perspective. Your donation maintains these important collaborative spaces that help our land managers make better informed decisions.



Testimonials

"Mountain Studies Institute is an inspiring organization to intern for because their projects and data collected are meaningful to the residents of the San Juans. MSI helped me strengthen my skills and my passion to use science to make a difference." Lara Getz, MSI Intern.

"It has been critical to the bighorn sheep monitoring program to have MSI as a key coordinator for the project. They provide important verifiable data through their annual monitoring report which is imperative for the future decisions being made about the species. It is powerful to have MSI provide this data as a scientific, non-advocacy organization." -Dan Parkinson, Citizen Science Volunteer

"I have never really liked being in school but MSI has done a great job at mixing up the information and having us learn with hands-on experience. I am so grateful, this really has been the most interested I have been while learning and wanting to ask questions." - Watershed School Student

Mission

To empower communities, managers, and scientists to innovate solutions through advancing mountain research, promoting education, and improving best practices.

We cultivate collaborations that enable resilient mountain communities to articulate issues, develop partnerships, and ignite initiatives that sustain the social, cultural, natural, and economic resources of the San Juan Mountains and mountain systems worldwide.

Background Statement

First conceptualized in the late 1990's as "living classroom without walls," the vision of a mountain center of education and research in Colorado's San Juan Mountains was refined by more than 20 collaborators including the Town of Silverton, San Juan County, Fort Lewis College, and San Juan Public Lands Center. With funding from two federal appropriations through the US Forest Service, the fledgling Institute became a reality in 2002. Now in its 20th year, MSI has grown to a staff of 15 with field offices in Silverton and Durango, and an annual budget of roughly $1.5 million. The organization operates more than 48 research and education programs annually in an 11-county area of southwest Colorado (Archuleta, Dolores, Gunnison, Hinsdale, La Plata, Mineral, Montrose, Montezuma, Ouray, San Juan, and San Miguel), serving a regional population of approximately 164,000 people.

A focus on mountain systems has made MSI unique since its inception. While other organizations may focus on a particular element of the environment, MSI's work takes a systems-based approach, recognizing the interconnections between ecosystem components, and that all actions have cascading effects that reach across time and space. For example, rather than simply studying water quality, we would study how air quality impacts a high alpine lake's water quality through deposition of mercury and nutrients, teasing out the connections and exploring the creative tension at the intersection of disciplines.

MSI is unique from other institutions in that we are focused on serving the isolated rural communities of southwest Colorado and the San Juan Mountains. The communities in this region, once reliant on mining, are now struggling economically. MSI strives to engage the underserved youth in this area, providing youth development programs that help them to understand and address the issues threatening their communities while improving their own potential to thrive in the economic environment by building environmental literacy, developing job skills, and participating in a variety of enrichment and service learning activities.

Organization Data

Summary

Organization name

Mountain Studies Institute

other names

MSI

Year Established

2002

Tax id (EIN)

73-1644103

Category

Environment, Education, Science & Technology, Youth Development

Organization Size

Large Organization

Address

162 Stewart St Unit A
Durango, CO 81303

Mailing

162 Stewart St. Unit A
Durango, CO 81303

Service areas

San Juan County, CO, US

La Plata County, CO, US

Phone

970-387-5161

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