Together we're connecting communities to science people can use to face our most pressing environmental challenges. As an independent research and education organization, your donations allow Mountain Studies Institute to pursue locally-relevant research, provide educational programs to students of all ages, build and maintain collaborative natural resource management, and monitor changes on our landscape. This work matters because the decisions we make today—about water, forests, wildlife, and climate—depend on accurate data, informed communities, and strong partnerships. Your support ensures that science stays accessible, actionable, and rooted in the places we love, so we can steward them for generations to come.
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. Fens play a vital role in maintaining ecological balance and climate stability, meaning their loss affects not just local landscapes but global environmental health.
Initial restoration work began last 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. Your support can make a direct impact in protecting these irreplaceable ecosystems before it's too late.
Intrigued Pika by Dan Brown
MSI staff member Jordan Schoen leading Pika training
Ravenous Pika by Dan Brown
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.
Pikas are more than just charismatic mountain dwellers—theyre vital indicators of environmental change in the alpine ecosystem. Monitoring their populations gives us early warnings about climate impacts. With your support, we empower citizen scientists to track pikas and gather data that highlights the urgency of protecting them.
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. Please consider making a donation to these important collaborative spaces that help our land managers make better informed decisions.
"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
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.
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 name
Mountain Studies Institute
other names
MSI
2002
Tax id (EIN)
73-1644103
Category
Environment, Education, Science & Technology, Youth Development
Organization Size
Large Organization
Address
162 Stewart St Unit AMailing
162 Stewart St. Unit ASan Juan County, CO, US
La Plata County, CO, US