Techniques for increasing watershed resilience to wildland fire

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Fire is an ecosystem process managed in the contemporary western U.S. at great expense, but with mixed results— yet it is one that can be re-worked to positive effect by melding ancient burning practices with contemporary scientific findings.
The “natural infrastructure” elements of stone and wood are components of ecosystem processes whose contemporary application, when guided by ancient practices and recent research, can mitigate some of the negative effects of contemporary fire regimes.
The following fact sheet is a summary of our 2025 working paper which considers how scientific research and creative on-the-ground applications that merge ancient and contemporary approaches and techniques can improve both pre-event resilience, and post-event recovery outcomes.