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ForageIQ runs a daily pipeline at 4 AM MT to score mushroom foraging conditions across all 48 lower states from the Rockies to New England. Here's how the scoring engine works.
Each region is scored on 5 binary factors. The tier is determined by how many factors are met.
Western: 0.3"+ precipitation in 7 days or active snowmelt from SNOTEL SWE decline. Eastern: 0.5"+ rain in 3 days (rain-only — no snowmelt). Species-specific: boletes need 2"+ then 7-10 days, chanterelles need 2-4" over 6-13 weeks (Ivanochko 2021), morels need >10mm events in prior 30 days (Mihail 2007).
Critical — most common limiting factor across all regions.
Soil temp must be above threshold AND sustained for 5+ of last 7 days. Western: 48°F at 2" depth (SNOTEL sensors). Eastern: 50°F at 4"/10cm depth (SCAN sensors or NWS air-temp model with canopy shading adjustment). Based on Schmidt (1983) and Mihail (2007): 410 degree-day accumulation (base 32°F) predicts first eastern morel appearance.
Required for all species except snowbank mushrooms (which fruit at 32°F at snowmelt edge).
At least one tracked species has an active season window for this region, based on elevation-specific phenology data. Each species has a defined start and end date range.
Ensures the scoring engine only reports activity during biologically plausible windows.
No forecast temperatures below 32°F in the next 48 hours from NWS point forecasts. Hard freezes damage developing mushroom primordia.
A single hard freeze can reset a flush.
Region is not in severe drought (D3 or higher) per the US Drought Monitor. Severe drought makes fruiting impossible regardless of other factors.
Overrides other factors when active.
Snow Water Equivalent, soil temperature, precipitation from 100+ automated mountain stations across western states. Updated daily.
NRCS SCANSoil Climate Analysis Network — 10cm soil temperature and precipitation from automated stations across eastern states. Same AWDB API as SNOTEL. Best coverage in MO; NWS air-temp model fills gaps elsewhere.
NOAA / NWS7-day point forecasts including temperature, precipitation probability, and freeze warnings for each region center point.
US Drought MonitorWeekly drought classification (D0-D4) by county. Used to flag regions where severe drought makes fruiting impossible.
WFIGS / NIFCAuthoritative wildfire perimeters from WFIGS Interagency Fire Perimeters (5-min refresh for current fires, historical archive for older fires). Full QC with geometry method, containment status, and acreage verification.
Google GeminiAI-generated conditions narratives for top-tier regions. Synthesizes sensor data, forecasts, and phenology into plain-English foraging guidance via Gemini 2.5 Flash.
Anthropic ClaudePowers the Trip Planner — builds personalized foraging itineraries with live conditions, driving routes, and gear checklists.
Sentinel-2 dNBRSatellite-derived burn severity at 20m resolution from Sentinel-2 imagery (AWS Earth Search). Uses up to 50 images per composite with cloud/water/vegetation masking. Validated against BAER Park Fire 2024 official data. High-severity conifer burns are the morel money spots.
BLM Surface ManagementPublic land ownership overlay showing National Forest, BLM, National Park, State, and private boundaries. Critical for verifying legal foraging access within burn perimeters.
MapboxInteractive map with 5 base styles (Outdoors, Satellite, Topo, Dark, Streets), roads and trails vector tiles, and terrain visualization.
RainViewerReal-time precipitation radar overlay on the interactive map. Free API, updated every 10 minutes.
Gemini 3.1 Flash Image (Nano Banana 2)Vertex AI image model used to generate all 156 codex species illustrations and 32 host tree/plant botanical plates. Pokémon-card art direction: thick outlines, flat cel-shading, cream background. Called once per species via the generate_codex_art.py pipeline.
ForageIQ covers all 48 lower states with 177 foraging regions, 71 tracked burn sites, and 32,000+ campgrounds. Eight regional groupings below — every state with at least one tracked region.
Every foraging region includes nearby camping options sourced from USFS, BLM, NPS, and state recreation databases.
Each campground listing includes: managing agency, elevation, number of sites, fees, season dates, amenities, reservation links, and foraging-specific notes.
Pro subscribers can generate personalized foraging trip itineraries powered by Claude AI with live conditions data.
Save regions you care about and get pinged when they hit S- or A-tier. The pipeline detects tier upgrades during each daily run, then sends a push to opted-in devices with the region name, soil temp, moisture status, and top viable species.
Available in the mobile app (v1.2.0+). Enable in Account → Notifications.
A personal mushroom field guide with 156 North American species, each illustrated as a cel-shaded trading card. Unlock species as you find them in the wild, track progress across 13 badges, filter by region or season, and learn the dangerous lookalikes before they land you in the ER.
All 156 species are currently unlockable during alpha. After Stripe goes live, the free tier caps at the first 3 discoveries.
71 post-fire sites from 2024-2025 across 14 western states, selected for morel mushroom hunting potential in conifer forests at 5,000-10,000 ft elevation. Severity overlays render only for fires that pass our forest-cover quality check (see below).
Not every wildfire produces morel habitat. We deliberately exclude fires whose severity rasters would mislead you into a wasted drive. As of April 2026, 29 tracked 2025 fires are filtered out for one of these reasons:
Fires not yet evaluated still render. Only explicit failures are hidden. If a major news fire is missing, this is usually why — we can verify on request.
The current scoring engine uses deterministic rules Tim wrote by hand. We're building a data-driven alternative that learns fruiting patterns from millions of real observations correlated with the exact environmental conditions that produced them.
2M+ research-grade fungi observations across CONUS since 2015 — the training labels for what fruits where and when.
Daily precipitation, min/max temperature, humidity at 4 km resolution for all of CONUS. The primary driver of fruiting timing.
Satellite soil-moisture at depth, 9 km. Catches the wet-weeks-before-fruiting signal that rain totals alone miss.
Forest Inventory Analysis — per-plot tree species composition across all 48 states. Critical for host-specific species (oak → hen/chicken, cottonwood/elm → morel).
30 m soil properties: pH, drainage class, texture. Some species are highly sensitive to soil conditions.
10 m elevation data for slope, aspect, and topographic position index — north-facing vs. south-facing at fine scale.
Historical fire perimeters + severity from 1984–present. Burn age + severity as features for post-fire morels.
Satellite NDVI green-up timing and pre-computed drought indices (PDSI, SPI) for CONUS.
Nothing changes for users today. When v2 goes live, you'll see per-species grid-level probabilities on the map with honest confidence tiers, layered on top of everything v1 already provides.