INSTAAR's 75th anniversary (1951-2026)
75 years of discovery on top of the world
Join us in celebrating INSTAAR's 75 year history of groundbreaking research and education, plus all the amazing people who make it happen.
We also need your help to launch our next 75 years. Please consider donating, in any form or amount, to the people, equipment and resources behind our work.
Our institute was founded in 1951 by John Marr, a young ecologist with a passion for the living organisms intrepid enough to survive harsh winters high in the Rockies. Capitalizing on a national wave of interest in scientific prominence, INSTAAR soon expanded its operations to become a global leader in environmental research.
Today, INSTAAR’s mission to study the causes and consequences of environmental change has never been more important as our planet experiences an unprecedented temperature shift. The institute leads environmental research in the arctic, antarctic, alpine, oceans and beyond. Our work is interdisciplinary and forward-thinking — experts across scientific fields collaborate on complex problems, and students and postdoctoral trainees transform into scientific leaders.
Our research strengths include:
Cold regions
Past climate
Ecological change
Atmospheric gases
Earth surface processes
In the past year alone, our research spanned:
7
continents & Earth’s oceans
200
scientific publications
600
news mentions
Anniversary events
Join us in person or online for our 75th anniversary event series throughout 2026. Diane McKnight will kick off our "women of INSTAAR" seminars with an evening talk about her extensive experience studying the biogeochemistry of lakes and streams of Antarctica. If attending her talk via Zoom, be sure to register in advance. In the summer, the Mountain Research Station will host an open house as well as a series of research talks.
Check in here for more events and info throughout the year.
Our history
Inaugurated in 1951, INSTAAR is one of the oldest research institutes at the University of Colorado. Its origins extend back farther, to the Mountain Laboratory in Tolland, Colorado (1909–1919), and to University Camp located near Niwot Ridge, Colorado (1914–1920). In the early 1920s, research moved from University Camp to the present site of the Mountain Research Station, which remains an important field station supporting INSTAAR research.
We will be adding a deep dive into INSTAAR's past to this page soon. Keep your eye out for theses, timelines, photos, and more.
In the meantime, check out our 107-page booklet 50th Anniversary: The Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research 1951–2001 (PDF). It covers INSTAAR's history extensively through 2001, including personal recollections.
Anniversary merch - coming soon!
Celebrate our anniversary, support INSTAAR, and look good doing it!
Limited edition INSTAAR 75th merch, including t-shirts, totes, and stickers, will be released soon. Who knows, maybe we'll bring back the ol' surfing polar bear design too. For now, you can shop for INSTAAR merch here. But you must pickup your purchase at our front office until the new store launches.
Future Forward Facilities Fund
INSTAAR houses more than 20 unique laboratories with state-of-the-art equipment maintained by expert technicians that unlock breakthrough research. Many of our facilities feature one-of-a-kind instruments developed in-house by our teams.
Laboratory equipment and personnel are critical to our research. Your gift to our facilities fund will expand our capabilities, upgrade one-of-a-kind instruments, and sustain expert staff. Working together, we can bridge the gap between ‘what if’ and ‘here’s how’.
Our lab capabilities are vast. We measure chemicals and their isotopes, extract DNA and other organic molecules from environmental samples, detect rare elements and compounds, and identify microscopic organisms. INSTAAR’s walk-in freezer stores ice cores from Antarctica and Greenland, preserving a climate record that extends backwards for hundreds of thousands of years. Our radiocarbon laboratory turns air samples into solid graphite so they can be measured on a powerful mass spectrometer.
Lab highlights:
New Frontiers Faculty Fund
INSTAAR faculty have deepened humanity's understanding of cold regions vastly over the past 75 years, thanks to a steady stream of support from federal agencies such as the National Science Foundation. Unfortunately, federal support for the kind of high-risk, exploratory studies that produce truly ground-breaking science has dwindled.
Your gift to our faculty fund will launch ambitious forward-thinking science at the far ends of the world. These seed funds will empower our faculty to grow exploratory thinking into large-scale, impactful research projects.
Our researchers often start with big open-ended questions. Where are the most important hotspots for life in Antarctica? Or, how does water quality change over the length of the Colorado River? (to name two). Funding for these types of investigations requires foresight beyond short-term economic time scales. But the answers to these questions also have an outsized impact on scientific progress, societal wellbeing and the health of our planet.
See INSTAAR's faculty fellows >
Exploratory research examples:
Poles to Peaks Postdoctoral Fellowship
Cold regions are changing faster than anywhere else on Earth, and our institute is uniquely positioned to study these changes, predict their impacts, and propose solutions. Help us mentor the next generation of interdisciplinary scientists working on the front lines of climate change.
Your gift to our postdoctoral fellowship fund will bring the best and brightest young scientists to INSTAAR to help us plan for our planet’s future. It will also broaden interdisciplinary collaboration at INSTAAR — connecting scientists across fields through mentorship.
Our postdoctoral scholars are central to INSTAAR's research, helping us span many fields, including aquatic and hydrological sciences; atmospheric, oceanic, and climate sciences; ecology and evolutionary biology; environmental and mechanical engineering; and cryospheric, geological, and geographical sciences. Innovative science comes from crossing these disciplinary boundaries and exchanging ideas.
Postdoc highlights:
Other ways to climb with INSTAAR
Spruce Gulch is a living laboratory, providing locally relevant research and educational opportunities for scientists, students, K-12 educators and nonprofit groups. Spruce Gulch is INSTAAR’s newest acquisition, thanks to a generous donation, and is also Colorado’s first-ever research reserve in a Front Range foothills ecosystem. Its beauty and close location to CU Boulder campus also make it an excellent site for experiential learning in the humanities, social sciences, architecture and the arts. Your support will help launch research and education efforts that have a direct impact on Boulder and the surrounding area.
The Mountain Research Station is a premier field site for mountain environmental science, supporting interdisciplinary research, field courses, and public seminars. The station hosts the longest continuous CO2 record in North America (third longest in the world). And that’s just one of many research programs from the station’s 105-year history that have shaped how we look at the world. In the summer, weekly evening seminars are open to the public. Your support will help faculty, students, and visiting scientists expand our knowledge of high-alpine environments.
The Niwot Ridge Long-Term Ecological Research Program studies forests, meadows, streams, and lakes in the high-elevation mountains of Boulder County. The program aims to better understand how and why these systems are changing so that we can help conserve and manage montane habitats into the future. Beyond research in plant, microbial, and animal ecology, the program also focuses on high-elevation hydrology and maintains the highest elevation climate station in the US. Your contribution is an investment in the science we need to understand our changing planet and the people who will lead us to a sustainable future.
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Questions about INSTAAR's funds?
Contact Nikki Lovenduski, INSTAAR Director
Want to make a gift by mail, by phone, as stock, matching, etc?
See Ways to Give and contact Amanda Nugent, CU Boulder Office of Advancement
Thank you!