Research theme

Water management & soil restoration

Understanding and shaping how water moves through landscapes, managing dry seasons in the era of climate change, and regenerating soils.

Dry seasons are getting longer and more intense, and forests and landscapes must adapt as climate stress builds. This theme looks at how water moves across and through a landscape, and at how land management can help it hold more water, nutrients, and living soil into the dry months. Our work includes contour earthworks that slow runoff, meadow and vegetation restoration that aims to keep moisture in the ground, and soil regeneration practices that rebuild structure and biology.

We use satellite imagery, soil surveys, soil moisture and evapotranspiration data, and drone flights to build digital twins of our sites, and we explore how technology can track plant stress, growth, and change over time. The aim is to learn what makes forests resilient to climate stress, and to measure it well enough that the lessons carry to other landscapes.

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 7 entries
  • Bright green new grass grows through flattened, pale dry grass in a sloping meadow with leafless trees, below an oak and pine covered hill under heavy winter cloud.

    · San Domingo

    Green grass under last summer's thatch

    Late in the afternoon of December 23, 2025, new green grass was coming up through the flattened, bleached thatch of last summer's growth…

  • Low aerial view of a frost-whitened meadow beside a narrow, stony creek channel, with a large tree holding yellow leaves and dense green woodland behind under a pale morning sky. +1 photo

    · San Domingo

    Frost on the creek meadow

    Frost still lay on the meadow along San Domingo Creek on the morning of December 13, 2025, when we flew a drone low along the creek at San…

  • A creek runs between dark, wet, rounded boulders and moss-covered rocks under leafy trees, with raindrop rings on the pool in the foreground and yellow leaves in the shallows. +1 photo

    · San Domingo

    The creek running in a November rain

    Rain was falling on the creek at San Domingo Arbory around midday on November 16, 2025, ringing the pools with drops. Water ran fast…

  • Small yellow-and-white tidy tips and pale blue baby blue eyes flowers grow among flat stones lining a shallow swale. +1 photo

    · Woodland Hilltop

    Wildflowers in the swales

    Tidy tips (Layia platyglossa) and baby blue eyes (Nemophila menziesii) are blooming in one of the rock-lined contour swales at Woodland…

  • Aerial view on an evening looking down a wooded valley toward hazy ridges and a low sun, with backlit pines along the slopes and a narrow green meadow and track on the valley floor. +1 photo

    · San Domingo

    Evening light down the canyon

    Low sun lit up the canyon at San Domingo Arbory on an evening drone flight on February 28, 2025. Looking down the valley, the meadow along…

  • Aerial view of a creek running fast and white over rocks between banks of bare, leafless trees and brown brush, with a narrow track along the right edge. +1 photo

    · San Domingo

    San Domingo Creek running in midwinter

    On the afternoon of February 15, 2025, a drone flight at San Domingo Arbory found San Domingo Creek running fast and white over its rocks,…

  • A clear creek runs over a gravel bed between banks of leafless trees and tangled brown brush, under a deep blue sky. +1 photo

    · San Domingo

    Winter flow in San Domingo Creek

    San Domingo Creek was flowing on February 8, 2025, in the wet season. Clear water ran between banks of bare winter trees and brush, and…