Research theme

Wildfire resilience

Reducing wildfire fuel and cultivating fire-resilient landscapes. Applying fuel treatments, from thinning and fuel breaks to controlled burns, while prototyping new ways to target, plan, track, and execute wildfire risk mitigation work.

California’s foothill forests and woodlands sit where wildfire risk, private ownership and rural communities overlap. Actively managing forests and landscapes can significantly reduce the impact of fires and prevent catastrophic fires, but can incur significant ongoing labor costs.

We are working towards returning natural fire cycles to landscapes where appropriate for sustainable fuel load management and ecosystem health. Our forestry and ecology teams work to design treatment plans which balance cost, technology testing, and fire risk priorities.

Projects

All projects
An open-topped steel ring kiln beside a heap of cut brush, with a small stepladder and long-handled tools leaning against it.

Active Underway

Biochar from fuel reduction

Fuel reduction (clearing fallen and dead wood, pruning low branches, thinning) leaves wood that has to come out anyway. We turn it into biochar on site in flame-cap ring kilns, so little of it has to be hauled, and mix the biochar back into soils the Gold Rush left degraded. Fuel reduction and kiln burns are underway; soil trials and carbon estimates come next.

San Domingo — Forest carbon sequestration with biochar, Wildfire resilience, Ecological restoration, Water management & soil restoration

Oaks against a clear blue sky above a slope of gray, shredded wood mulch, with green shrubs and a patch of dry grass coming up through it.

Active Underway

Woodland Hilltop restoration

Restoring a mixed pine and oak woodland on 22 acres next to downtown Murphys, where a fire-prone thicket of manzanita and toyon grew up after past clear-cutting and gold mining. The work includes contour swales, native wildflower seeding, targeted thinning, walkable trails, an access road and pruning oaks so they grow as trees.

Woodland Hilltop — Ecological restoration, Wildfire resilience, Water management & soil restoration

Field journal

All 4 entries
  • Bright orange coals glow through a narrow seam in the dark steel wall of a ring kiln. +1 photo

    · San Domingo

    Biochar burn day at the ring kiln

    Burn day in the steel ring kiln at San Domingo, the day after the crew staged the burn. Slash from thinning goes in load by load, and a…

  • Tall orange flames rise from a load of brush in a new steel ring kiln with bright, bolted panels, standing on bare red earth below an oak-covered bank. +1 photo

    · San Domingo

    First burn in the new ring kiln

    On November 24, 2025, we ran the first burn in a new steel ring kiln at San Domingo Arbory, among DeepForest's first biochar burns. Its…

  • A freshly bladed trail of bare red soil, ridged with the cleat marks of a tracked machine, curves along the edge of a green meadow below oaks, with lupine on the bank and a chainsaw lying in cut grass. +1 photo

    · San Domingo

    A new trail along the spring meadow

    On the morning of May 2, 2025, a newly cut trail of bare red soil curved along the edge of a meadow at San Domingo Arbory. The soil still…