[ ABOUT · CHARTER · BACKGROUND PLATE ]
ABOUT · CHARTEREST. 2023 · BC SOCIETY · 23 PARTNER ORGS

A toolkit, built for the people defending old growth.

We are a field-and-software service organization. The forests aren't ours; neither are the campaigns. We provide capture, immersive build-outs, and content — co-produced with conservation groups and indigenous-led stewards, branded for them, owned by them.

§ 01
CHARTER

The forest has always been the missing party in the room.

A 900-year western redcedar gets reduced to a line on a permit. Once felled, the volumetric, sonic, biotic reality of that grove is irrecoverable — and almost never present in the room where its fate is decided.

We don't fight those rooms ourselves — the partner organizations on the ground do. What they often lack is a way to bring the grove with them. Emergent Layer is a toolkit for those groups: LiDAR, photogrammetry, Gaussian splatting, immersive installations, and the content to share them — co-produced, branded for the partner, owned by the partner.

The grove, finally, walks in with them.

§ 02
OPERATING PRINCIPLES · IV
I

Partner-led

The campaign isn't ours. We follow the steward on the ground; our deliverables serve their fight.

II

Branded for them

Every installation, embed, and social cut ships in the partner's name — not ours.

III

Open archive

All captures are CC-BY-SA 4.0. Researchers, journalists, and lawyers download free.

IV

Indigenous primacy

Indigenous Data Sovereignty governs every site on indigenous land. No exceptions.

§ 03
FIELD CHRONOLOGY · 2023 →
2023.SPR

Society chartered

Three engineers, two ecologists, one borrowed RIEGL scanner.

2023.AUT

First partner · Shíshálh

Captured a 1,240-acre grove with the Shíshálh Nation on BC's Sunshine Coast. Now in provincial and Crown proceedings.

2024

First installations

Pop-up dome rooms toured to four hearings. Method open-sourced.

2025

Atlas launches

12 sites, 6 bioregions, splat-walkable in the browser.

2026

Year 3

23 partners, 47 sites, 18 installations, 12,428 acres archived.

§ 04
SUPPORT · FY26

Funded by people who walk in forests.

DOEN FOUNDATION
PATAGONIA · 1%
MOZILLA OPEN SOURCE
TIDES CANADA
NSERC · RGPIN
840 INDIVIDUAL DONORS
FY26 REVENUE · $2.4M CAD
FIELD OPS · 64% · ENGINEERING · 22% · ADMIN · 9% · OUTREACH · 5%
▸ DOWNLOAD ANNUAL REPORT (2024) →