Press & media

The short version

A free, public fall foliage map built from the trees themselves. It reads what species grows in every county and every national park and forest in the lower 48, how high it stands and what this September’s weather is doing to it, folds in live forest cameras, state foresters, citizen observers and a decade of More Than Just Parks’ own dated footage from the field, and names the place: a peak date and a four-day window for more than 1,500 parks, forests, wildernesses and refuges, ranked against a visitor’s ZIP code and dates, on any day of the year.

It is one of several free public tools built by More Than Just Parks, an independent, reader-funded public lands newsroom founded by filmmakers Jim and Will Pattiz.

Fact sheet

• What it coversEvery county in the lower 48, every national park in the lower 48 with fall canopy, every national forest, and more than 1,500 public lands destinations in all, each with its own peak date and four-day window. More than 360 places carry a page of their own, and every one of the 48 states has a page.
• What is newIt’s the first public foliage map to forecast national parks and national forests as places rather than coloring the county they sit in, the first to read the species of every stand and print two peaks where two species turn a week apart, and the first to fold in a newsroom’s own decade of dated field footage as ground truth.
• How it worksSpecies and elevation give every place a peak date for a normal year. This September’s temperature against normal shifts it. Reports from cameras, foresters, observers, photographs and our own crew pull it toward what the ground says, each through a measured gate. The result is scored against long-running forest cameras that never saw it, and the whole scorecard is published.
• The year roundThe same model predicts green-up, full canopy, peak color and dormancy, so the calendar scrubs from January to December. In spring the map will follow the green north, and it will forecast the blooms.
• Update cadenceRead daily through the season: temperature, cameras, foresters, observers and photographs. Refit when the ground truth changes. Every page prints the time it was issued.
• AlertsFree peak alerts by place, a week out and at peak, no account required. A weekend report every Friday.
• CostFree, no account required.

Photos, screenshots and footage

Free to publish in coverage of the map, with credit to More Than Just Parks. The screenshots were shot from the live map on 22 September 2026. The map changes every morning, so if your story needs a particular place, state or day, tell us and we’ll shoot it the same day.

Download everythingNine screenshots, two photographs of the founders, the fact sheet, two logos and a credit sheet. ZIP, 28 MB.

The one-page fact sheetWhat it is, the numbers, what’s new and where the data comes from. PDF.

Footage

Logos

More Than Just Parks, colorMore Than Just Parks, white

Peak dates by state

The forecast as of September 25, 2026, and it moves as reports come in, so check the state’s page the morning you publish. “Most of the state” is the middle county by peak date. Mountains and lowlands can sit weeks apart, which is what the first and last columns are for. Every state links to its page, with every county and every park and forest in it.

Need it cut another way? A county list for your coverage area, or the parks and forests within a drive of your city for a given weekend, takes us about an hour.

The announcement

Plain textFor release Wednesday, 23 September 2026. Quote Will Pattiz as written; Jim Pattiz is in the field and available on his return.

Who built it

More Than Just Parks is the public lands journalism and film team founded by brothers Will and Jim Pattiz, who have spent more than a decade filming and reporting on America’s national parks, forests, monuments and refuges. The map grew out of that fieldwork: the 107,000 dated frames that check its forecasts are theirs. Both are available for interviews, the same day for anyone on deadline.

What it does that nothing else does

• Named places, not colored countiesBridger-Teton National Forest gets its own date, its own week and its own page. Every other public map paints the county and leaves you to guess which end of a two-million-acre forest it means.
• The species of every standRead from LANDFIRE at 30 meters for every county and every forecast place, so the forecast knows aspen at 9,000 feet from red oak in a valley, and paints color only where deciduous trees actually stand.
• Two trees, two peaksWhere a second species turns a week or more after the first, both dates print. In the northern Rockies the cottonwood and aspen turn, then the larch two weeks later. One date per place is wrong for half the trip.
• Elevation inside the parkEvery forecast place carries its own elevation from USGS terrain data, sampled inside its boundary and along its river roads, because color climbs down a mountain at a measured rate.
• This year’s weatherA daily read of September temperature against the thirty-year normal shifts every date by a coefficient we measured ourselves over 639 camera-years. A hot September pushes peak later.
• A gate on every reportCameras, foresters, observers and photographs all feed the forecast, and each passes a measured gate first. We found that admitting every report makes the forecast worse. Gated, it’s better everywhere and best in the fortnight before peak.
• A decade of our own framesMore Than Just Parks has filmed public lands in the fall for more than a decade. Our geotagged, dated frames are read for the color of each species in the frame and enter the forecast as ground truth. It is the layer that caught the standard model running ten days early in Montana and three weeks early in Utah.
• Live cameras before you driveForty forest research cameras photograph the same trees every day. The map shows the nearest one on the place card, so you can look at the trees today.
• Any day of the yearScrub the calendar and watch the season move. Nine stages from dormant to late season, for every county, from January to December. In spring it will forecast green-up and the blooms.

How it works, in plain words

Start with what grows there. For every county and every park and forest, read the species mix off the federal vegetation map and how high the trees stand. Fit the day each species turns against a decade of forest cameras and dated photographs, including ours. That gives every place a peak date for a normal year.

Then make it this year. Read September’s temperature against normal and shift the dates. Read every report that comes in from a camera, a forester, an observer, a photograph or our own crew, and let the ones that pass the gate pull the date toward what the ground says. Print a four-day window, name the place, and show a live camera when one is nearby.

Then check it. Every forecast is scored against long-running forest cameras that never saw it, region by region, and the scorecard is public on the methodology page, including where we are weakest.

Our own decade in the field

More Than Just Parks has spent more than a decade filming America’s public lands in the fall, and every frame carries a date and a location. The library holds more than 107,000 frames; over six thousand are geotagged autumn frames from the West alone, across more than 700 trip-days from the Flathead to the Colorado Plateau.

Those frames are read the way a forester reads a stand. A frame from the Flathead Valley on 2 October 2018 becomes two readings, because the cottonwood along the river was at 80 percent color and the larch above it hadn’t started. Each reading enters the forecast as evidence against the model, the same way a state forester’s weekly report does.

The archive is how the newsroom caught the model everyone else ships. Built from latitude and elevation alone it runs about ten days early across the northern Rockies and nearly three weeks early on the Colorado Plateau, and there are almost no research cameras out West to say so. The species layer that replaced it was checked against those frames, region by region.

Data sources

LANDFIRE LF2024 existing vegetation type and forest canopy cover at 30 meters (U.S. Forest Service and USGS); USGS 3DEP elevation at 30 meters; the PhenoCam Network at Northern Arizona University (daily canopy greenness at forest monitoring towers since 2008); Open-Meteo ERA5 September temperature against the 1991 to 2020 normal; National Weather Service point forecasts; official state forestry and tourism foliage reports (Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Pennsylvania, North Carolina); the USA National Phenology Network; research-grade iNaturalist observations; USGS PAD-US boundaries; and the More Than Just Parks field archive, more than 107,000 dated, geotagged frames from a decade of filming public lands. Full detail and methodology are on the methodology page.

Citing and using the tool

You are welcome to reference, screenshot, and link to the tool in reporting, with attribution to “More Than Just Parks” and a link to the page. Please do not present our verdicts or estimates as official government determinations; they are our reading of public data, and the underlying agencies are the authoritative source. We do not offer a public data API or bulk data export.

For interviews, a founder quote, art we haven’t shot yet, custom data pulls for a story, or to verify a number before you publish, get in touch and we’ll turn it around quickly.

Press contact

ask@morethanjustparks.com
More Than Just Parks · morethanjustparks.com