HabitatKey helps reveal the relationships that make a place come alive — the plants growing there, the wildlife that depends on them, and why those connections matter to all of us.
We’re building a platform to help organizations and communities document, understand, and share the ecological story of real places, with trustworthy, source-backed information at its heart.
A platform for understanding and sharing the ecological story of real places.
HabitatKey connects plants, wildlife relationships, regional and native context, and trusted sources to the places where they occur. From a whole property to a habitat zone or an individual plant, it is being designed to make ecological value easier to document, interpret, and share.
Designed to complement established systems of record, such as ArcGIS, IrisBG, and Hortis, with a focus on ecological interpretation and public understanding.
The bigger picture
Why this matters to all of us
Healthy habitats aren’t separate from our lives. They are part of the living systems that support us.
The plants around our homes, parks, schools, streets, and workplaces can provide shade, slow rainfall, support pollinators and birds, build healthier soils, and strengthen the ecological networks running through our communities.
Shade & shelterMore livable places
Rainfall & soilHealthier living systems
Pollinators & birdsFood and habitat for wildlife
Connected habitatsEcological links across communities
HabitatKey is being built to make those connections visible — so a landscape becomes more than something we simply look at. It becomes something we understand. And people are more likely to protect what they understand and value.
From knowledge to understanding
What’s coming
We’re building a simple way to explore a habitat, understand its relationships, and bring its story to more people.
Explore a place
Move from a property to its habitat areas and the individual plants growing there.
Follow the relationships
Understand what wildlife depends on those plants and the ecological roles they play.
See the regional context
Explore native and regional context, because ecological information depends on place.
Trace the knowledge
Follow ecological information back to its sources and understand how claims are supported.
Share the story
Bring a place to life for visitors through accessible public pages and QR experiences.
Observe change over time
Add photographs and observations to help document how a habitat develops.
Trusted ecological information
Trust the source, not just the answer.
Ecological information can vary by region, source, and interpretation. HabitatKey is being built around provenance: a clear view of where information comes from and how it is supported.
The goal is to provide information people can understand and trust, including where credible sources disagree or the evidence is incomplete.
Sources you can follow
Authoritative references linked to the ecological claims they support.
Context that matters
Regional relevance and clear distinctions between general knowledge and information about a particular place.
Uncertainty made visible
Transparent handling of disagreement, limitations, and questions that need human review.
For organizations & communities
Built for real places.
Every place has relationships worth understanding.
HabitatKey is intended to help the people who care for a place tell its ecological story — and help the people who visit see it with new understanding.
Urban forests
Public gardens
Parks
Schools & campuses
Restoration sites
Community landscapes
Nonprofit properties
Municipal landscapes
Residential gardens
Coming soon
Currently in pilot development
HabitatKey is being developed and tested through real-world habitat experiences before broader release.
Our current focus is a simple, trustworthy way to connect properties, plants, ecological knowledge, provenance, media, and public interpretation.