Adventure Scientists

The Gallatin River carries the mountains to the sea. It carries our communities and our livelihoods. It carries our stories and dreams. And this river also carries something more ominous in its waters: Our garbage.

In an Adventure Scientists pilot survey of five sites along the Gallatin River, microplastic particles were found in every sample, some in startlingly high numbers. With this knowledge, Adventure Scientists launched the Gallatin Microplastics Initiative to study the abundance and types of microplastics in the Gallatin Watershed. This is an expansion of the Adventure Scientists Worldwide Microplastics Project.

​In each year of the Gallatin Microplastics Initiative, 60+ volunteers will return four times to their assigned sites on the main Gallatin and its tributaries, gathering an in-depth picture of plastic pollution from 70 sites in the watershed. This information will help us understand the extent of the problem and how to resolve it.

Wild pollinator populations are in decline. There is limited data to inform the status of pollinators in remote environments. Land managers need our help to gather data in order to conserve and protect those pollinators that support the health and wealth of our public lands.

Illegal logging destroys forests, disrupts ecological processes, increases CO2 in the atmosphere, and provides revenue for other illicit activities. Port officials, law enforcement officers, corporations, and everyday consumers need new tools to disrupt tainted global supply chains. Cutting-edge genetic technologies can help, but in order to do so, they will require extensive DNA reference materials from high-value timber species.

In partnership with the World Resources Institute, Adventure Scientists is headed into the field to gather tree tissue samples which geneticists from DNA4 Technologies and New Mexico State University will use to develop the genetic reference libraries.

The first phase of this project will focus on the bigleaf maple, a towering hardwood that grows along the Pacific coast of the United States and Canada. Because about one in 20 bigleaf maples possesses an incredibly beautiful wood pattern, these trees are targeted by timber thieves for their high value in the guitar and furniture trade.

Although microplastic particles are smaller than five millimeters in size, they likely pose a massive environmental and human health risk.

Ocean researchers have found them in nearly every liter of ocean water they’ve examined, from places including Maine, Alaska, Argentina, Thailand and Antarctica. Toxins including DDT, BPA and pesticides adhere to the particles. Because they can resemble plankton, the particles are often ingested by small aquatic life. The toxins biomagnify as they move up the food chain, accumulating in birds, sea life and humans.

Microplastics have several sources: They weather from debris like drink bottles and shopping bags; they're laundered from nylon clothing; and they wash down the drain with many common cosmetics and toothpastes.

Collecting water samples worldwide, Adventure Scientists is studying the sources, composition and distribution of this pollution. We plan to work with corporate partners to stop the problem at its source.