What the desk can give a reporter on deadline

More Than Just Parks is an independent public lands publication with a research desk. We read the federal record every night: comment dockets, leases, lobbying filings, litigation, fire and closure data, the money. If your story touches America's public lands, there's a good chance we already have the number you need, and we'll show you how we got it.

On the record

Jim Pattiz and Will Pattiz, known collectively as the Pattiz Brothers, are the duo behind More Than Just Parks. They've spent their entire adult lives traveling across America's public lands helping tell their stories. They came to this work as filmmakers, documenting the country's parks and forests for the agencies that manage them, and spent years in the field learning these places and the people who run them from the inside. Both are available for interviews by phone or video, usually the same day.

Citable reports

The desk publishes reports on what the federal record shows, each with a method section, a permalink and figures that re-derive from the source when you load the page. Start with the reports index. Cite them as "a More Than Just Parks analysis of" the record named on the page.

Live figures from the tools

Each tool has a press page with current figures, story leads and share cards:

• Data Center Tracker: more than 1,900 U.S. data centers traced to the public record, each measured to the boundary of protected public land.
• Fall Foliage Tracker: peak color forecasts for national parks and national forests, place by place.
• Public Lands Wildfire Tracker: fires on federal land, perimeters and the people under smoke.
• Public Lands Air Quality Map: smoke and air quality by park and forest.
• STAND for Public Lands: the groups, their money and their filings.
• Roadless Rule Map and the Public Lands Action Network: open comment periods and what the record already holds.
• MTJP Corps: field photographers and their work.

Maps, charts and photographs

Charts on our report pages carry the credit on the chart; ask and we'll send a file sized for print or web. Maps and photographs are available for editorial use on request; tell us the outlet and the story and we'll send files sized for print or web. Credit reads "More Than Just Parks."

Corrections

If we got something wrong, tell us and we'll fix it and log the correction on the page. Our editorial standards say how we work.