Early Days

Here you'll find some of the original founders and employees of the Natural Capital Project.

A teenage Heather Tallis helping a participant in an early InVEST training in China.

A teenage Peter Kariva, Heather Tallis, Christine Tam and others in China.

Heather Tallis and Collaborator Jumpin' on the Great Wall of China.

Taylor Ricketts doing science with collaborators wearing his always amusing "**ck off, man, I'm a scientist" t-shirt.

RIOS

RIOS was NatCap's first optimization focused software. Since its release it has been used in a handful of Latin American water funds to construct investment portfolios.

This is a snap from the first Stanford RIOS meeting with Heather Tallis, Hal Mooney, and Stacie Horsemask. (Circa 2011)

These crowns were hand crafted by local artists Adrian Vogl and Heather Tallis for James Douglass and Richard Sharp, the primary software developers of RIOS. (2012)

James Douglass moments after being awarded the Silver Crown of RIOS. (2012)

Halloweed

NatCap has participated in some form of All Hallows' Eve since its founding. This has included trick-or-treating and guising, monitoring haunted water funds, and donning costumes modeled after supernatural figures such as horses, bananas, and tacos.

Taco, known to be worn by Ginger Kowal, Richard Sharp, and others.

Banana, known to be worn by Drew Guswa, Richard Sharp, and others.

Party pants, worn by almost every NatCapper.

Those who have worn horsemask have done so in anonymity.

Halloween 2012

Halloween 2013

Halloween 2014 photo is too scary to post.

Halloween 2015

Halloween 2016

Office Space

Frugality runs deep in NatCap culture. We can see this in our historical selection of office space.

Greatful Bread is so often frequented by Seattle NatCappers that it's astounding they are not seen from any Google street imagery.

"That's not my bike, but that IS where I park it!" --Anne Guerry

The NOAA NW fisheries science center: NatCap Marine's headquarters from 2009-2012. "There was an armed guard there for a while. Then they had a budget cut and then there was nobody there." --Anne Guerry

NatCap software office, 2012-2016.

Ben Bryant's corner after an inebriated student slept on his desk.

We dedicate office spaces to those NatCappers that have moved on. (to other jobs)

NatCap's main headquarters office. We try to keep it clean.

InVEST

InVEST is our flagship software tool, modeling and valuing Ecosystem Services at the speed of science. You can always download the latest version of InVEST but only below can the artifacts.

"InVEST" was released on June 7, 2008 to a little more than half a dozen people at a WWF workshop. You can still email invest@naturalcapitalproject.org. Try it out today!

InVEST 2.2.1 (released on 1/22/2012) was our only other version of InVEST released to a CD. It was short-lived being replaced almost a month later by InVEST 2.2.2 on 3/3/2012.

Nowadays you can download InVEST directly from the World Wide Web. Check it out today!

Intellectual Property

NatCap's science development has exponentiated Since 2011. But it started simpler. See below for some early intellectual artifacts.

Christine Tam's notebook during her tenure as NatCap's first director. There are notes about hiring Heather Tallis ("very good!"), questions about publishing a paper in PNAS ("PNAS?"), and if InVEST should be demoed at a WWF training in China ("WWF China?").

First InVEST API design 8/11/2011 (courtesy of James Douglass's engineering notebook).

NCP-DEV, NatCap's first full time dedicated server. For years it hosted our webpage, InVEST downloads, and Lisa's intermediate files. Shut down in early 2016 when the Google cloud was just better.

Miscellanea

The story of NatCap is the story of ideas, shining light into dark corners. As such, no one expects a discrete set of categories to classify all NatCap artifacts.

"Don't put my photobomb in the miscellanea category." --Justin

Marinapalooza 20XX.

"Here's our original 2-pager about the new Moore grant that was to launch the marine team. At the time we didn't think we were part of NatCap so that's why the file is called MarCap" --Anne Guerry, MarCap Team Lead and n-Pager Writer