Counting marmots…
This is one of 12 scenarios the Centennial Campaign 2027 explores. It is an AI-generated planning artifact, not a forecast or an RMBL institutional commitment. The contingencies it depends on are named in its plausibility-caveats and (where applicable) upside or downside conditions sections. See the browse page for the full set, including the alternative scenarios.
Centennial Community-Anchored assumes the campaign comes in mid-range, and that RMBL makes community partnership a defining feature of how it does basin science. The basin's longest records — the marmot study now in its eighth decade, the meadow phenology series, the snowmelt-driven plant work — continue without lapse. A small data team grows, enough to begin reading a century of records at scales prior generations could not attempt. But the strategic anchor is RMBL365, the year-round building in Crested Butte, renovated and staffed to host ongoing partnerships with the Ute Indian Tribe, Gunnison Valley water districts, and county schools. About half the work is continuity stewardship; the other half builds community partnership capacity and modest data tools. The scenario forgoes new atmospheric instrumentation, large mechanistic experiments, and substantial financial reserves. It asks donors and the institution to test whether RMBL's longstanding commitment to its surrounding community can become a campaign-defining feature rather than a quiet background commitment.
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At mid-range magnitude, the campaign anchors on community partnership as a defining feature. Records are protected; data capacity grows; but the strategic direction is RMBL365 as the anchor for ongoing partnerships with the Ute Indian Tribe, Gunnison Valley water districts, and county schools. The scenario tests whether community priority — long an institutional commitment — can become a campaign-defining feature at mid-magnitude.
This scenario takes as its starting assumption that RMBL's longstanding commitment to its surrounding community can become a campaign-defining feature, not just an institutional background value. The campaign comes in at the middle of what RMBL might raise — substantial but not at the upper end — and the strategic question is what such a campaign should anchor on.
The answer this scenario tests is RMBL365. The building RMBL bought in Crested Butte in 2025 is renovated through the late 2020s into a year-round venue with laboratory space, meeting rooms designed for tribal and water-district partners, and classroom space for county schools. A small partnership-coordination team is hired and based there through the off-season. Their job is not to run projects but to sustain relationships with the Ute Indian Tribe, the Upper Gunnison River Water Conservancy District, the Colorado River Water Conservation District, the Forest Service, and the school district across years.
Underneath that anchor, the basin's longest records continue. The marmot demographic study now in its eighth decade. The meadow phenology series and the snowmelt-driven plant work are protected through targeted stewardship investments. A small data team grows, enough to begin digitizing a century of field notebooks and to support guest scientists using AI tools on basin records.
What the scenario does not do is build new atmospheric instrumentation, large mechanistic experiments, or substantial financial reserves. Federal funding stays tight through the period, and the partnership work has to prove itself as a stable funding stream — through foundations, private donors, and partner contributions — rather than relying on federal grants. The campaign treats community partnership as catalytic infrastructure: durable, place-based, and capable of compounding.
The first phase is RMBL365's transformation. By 2028 the building has been renovated: laboratory space for guest scientists staging field campaigns, a meeting room designed for ongoing work with tribal and water-district partners, classroom space the school district can use through the school year. A small partnership-coordination team is hired by 2029. Their first eighteen months are spent listening — meeting with the Ute Indian Tribe's natural-resources office, with the Upper Gunnison River Water Conservancy District, with Forest Service planners, with the school district, with county commissioners. The marmot study passes its seventy-fifth year in 2038, and a modest seventy-fifth-year event at RMBL365 marks the milestone for both scientific and community audiences. The data team grows by one or two positions: a digital archivist begins working through a century of field notebooks, and an additional data scientist supports guest researchers. The campaign closes near the middle of the realistic range. Federal contraction continues through the phase, and the campaign's mid-range scale already reflects that the partnership work has to be funded from foundations, individuals, and partner contributions rather than federal grants.
By the early 2030s, the partnership work starts producing visible co-produced research. The Ute Indian Tribe's natural-resources office and RMBL run a multi-year project on culturally important plants and their phenology in the basin, with the tribe's staff shaping the questions. The Upper Gunnison and Colorado River water districts and RMBL maintain a paired record of snowpack, soil moisture, and streamflow read alongside ranching and water-management calendars; the records are presented annually at district meetings. County schools run a phenology and pollinator monitoring program in partnership with RMBL, and high-school students contribute observations that enter the long record. The data team finishes digitizing the marmot field notebooks and most of the meadow phenology archive. Guest scientists begin publishing AI-assisted reanalyses of the long records — modest in scale but real. The marmot, meadow, and snowmelt records continue without lapse. Federal funding remains tight but somewhat stable; the campaign's diversified base holds the partnership work steady across the phase.
By the late 2030s, RMBL's partnership with its surrounding community has become a durable feature of how the institution does its work, not a project the campaign funded. The partnership-coordination team is stable. The Ute Indian Tribe, Gunnison Valley water districts, the Forest Service, and the school district are not audiences for basin findings but participants in shaping what is studied. The co-produced research streams have produced enough evidence to begin informing BLM and Forest Service planning revisions, water-court testimony, and county land-use decisions, on the timescales those processes actually use. The marmot study, now in its eighth decade, continues. The meadow phenology and snowmelt records continue without interruption. The data team has begun working with guest scientists on second-generation AI analyses that pull together a century of records across taxa. What the period has built is a model — visible to peer field stations and to funders — of a basin science that is genuinely co-produced with the community in which it happens. What it has not built is large new instrumentation, deep financial reserves, or independence from federal funding cycles. Those choices come due in the next campaign.
For a scientist considering bringing research to the basin during this period, the question is whether co-produced work appeals to you. RMBL365 is a real venue: laboratory space, meeting rooms, and a partnership team that can connect you to the Ute Indian Tribe's natural-resources office, water districts, the Forest Service, and the schools. If your work touches phenology, pollinators, snowpack, water quality, or culturally important plants, those connections will shape what you can ask and how your findings travel. The long records continue, and modest data capacity helps guest scientists read them at new scales. What you will not find here is new atmospheric instrumentation at the scale SAIL built, large factorial experiments, or a flagship AI synthesis program. Those who want the deepest mechanistic work or the broadest cross-mountain comparisons may find their fits elsewhere. Those who want their basin science to be done with the people who live in the basin will find this period a strong moment to come.
For someone on staff or the board, RMBL during this period feels like an institution that has become more deeply local. The Crested Butte building is in use through the winter — meetings with water-district partners in February, a tribal advisory session in March, a school-group visit in October. The partnership-coordination team is small but present year-round, and what they do reshapes some of what gets studied in Gothic each summer. The marmot study seventy-fifth year in 2026 is a community event, not just a scientific one. The data team grows enough that the long records become more readable, but the institutional growth is modest. The instrumentation core stays close to its 2026 footprint. There are real tradeoffs felt internally: the lack of deep financial reserves means each funding shock matters, and some promising scientific directions move slowly or not at all. What it gains is a kind of community grounding that is harder to lose than equipment is.
A gift to this campaign joins an effort to make community partnership a defining feature of how basin science gets done. Your contribution is part of renovating RMBL365 into a year-round venue where the Ute Indian Tribe, water districts, schools, and Forest Service partners are not audiences for findings but participants in shaping what is studied. It supports the small team that sustains those relationships across years. It enables the conditions under which the basin's longest records — the marmot study in its eighth decade, the meadow phenology series, the snowmelt-driven plant work — continue without lapse, and under which a modest data team begins reading a century of records at new scales. This campaign is not the largest RMBL could mount, and it leaves some scientific directions for a future cycle. What it offers is a bet that basin science done with the surrounding community compounds in ways that matter beyond what any single project can produce.
This scenario assumes that the donor base will respond to community partnership as a campaign-defining feature, not just as a supporting commitment. That is a real bet. RMBL's traditional donor base has been shaped by the scientific work, and whether donors will give at mid-range magnitude to a campaign whose external identity leads with RMBL365 and partnership relationships is genuinely uncertain. If the answer is no, the campaign either falls short of its target or quietly shifts its emphasis toward records stewardship — which would leave the partnership work underfunded relative to what this scenario describes.
The scenario also assumes that the Ute Indian Tribe, water districts, and school district will engage at the depth the partnership model requires. Co-produced research is more demanding than consultative outreach; it asks partners for sustained time and decision-making attention. If institutional capacity on partner sides is thinner than this scenario assumes, the work happens but at lower intensity than the central case describes.
A characteristic failure mode for this scenario is that the partnership work absorbs more institutional attention than it generates external funding for. The partnership team is small, and if foundations and individual donors do not sustain the partnership work as a fundable program over fifteen years, the scientific work and the partnership work compete for the same RMBL attention in ways that erode both.
A structural blind spot: the scenario does not account well for what happens if federal contraction is sharp enough to threaten the long records themselves. The modest savings layer is sized for the partnership work, not for protecting the records through a deep funding crisis. The records would survive a moderate shock; a severe one would force tradeoffs this scenario has not modeled.
Finally, the scenario assumes that community partnership translates into research and land-management outcomes within fifteen years. Some translation timescales — water-court proceedings, Forest Service plan revisions — operate on cycles long enough that the campaign period may end before the partnership work produces its most visible results.
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Speculative. Lower resolution than the primary horizon.
Looking past 2040 toward 2050, this scenario's lasting consequence is the institutional shape RMBL has settled into. The basin is studied with the surrounding community rather than from a distance. RMBL's place in the region — as scientific home, as community resource, as a working partner of the Ute Indian Tribe and the water districts — has deepened from periodic visibility into ongoing presence. The 2040s likely see a successor campaign that addresses what this one left undone: deeper financial reserves, atmospheric instrumentation, perhaps a more substantial translation function. The partnership model built in this period becomes the platform from which that next campaign launches, not a deliverable that needs defending. The long records continue with the marmot study approaching its ninetieth year. By 2050 the question of whether community partnership can be a defining feature of a basin field station has been answered — not in the abstract but through the durable relationships and co-produced records this period built. The further future remains genuinely uncertain, and this coda is offered as one plausible trajectory rather than a forecast.
In 2040, RMBL matters because the basin is studied with the surrounding community rather than from a distance. The institution's place in the region — as scientific home, as community resource, as a working partner of tribes and water districts — has deepened from periodic visibility into ongoing presence.