The Field Atlas begins in the field, with scientists observing, measuring, and sampling, and continues in the laboratory, where samples are examined and results are checked. We’re building it as a growing scientific commons: a shared record of field observations, environmental measurements, images, and research data.
The Atlas will preserve not only what was found, but the context that makes a finding useful—where it came from, how it was observed, and the conditions surrounding it. That gives others a foundation for comparing environments, testing ideas, and asking questions the original expedition never considered.
As we collect data, we will provide it to the public for the public good: insights, measurements, and metrics from places and questions that are not otherwise found on the internet, shared openly wherever it can be shared responsibly.
The Atlas also carries our research. Alongside expeditions, we support focused studies that start in the field and carry on afterwards. The first are in conservation and in heat-resistant crops: how plants tolerate rising temperatures, and what that means for the places and people who depend on them.
Conservation studies follow the questions our expeditions open: which habitats are changing, what lives in them, and what careful observation over time can tell us. Crop studies look at heat tolerance in the plants people grow, drawing on field measurements and on the record kept in the Atlas. Partners, methods, and the first study sites will be published here as they are settled.