We are a multidisciplinary research institute advancing climate-adaptive land management practices using modern technology. We act locally and partner globally to balance immediate results with scalable impact.
We believe research works best when new ideas are actively tested in the real world. Our project sites serve to test scientific and engineering ideas while restoring degraded landscapes.
About 450 acres of oak and pine forest, grazing meadows and seasonal creek valley along San Domingo Creek outside Murphys.
A 22-acre hilltop next to historic downtown Murphys.
Remote sensing with modern computer vision and AI-controlled active sampling can track and understand the plants, wildlife, weather, and humans interacting with a place.
Bringing back native woodland, meadows and soils on land cut over and mined since the Gold Rush, while evaluating how robotics and AI can help.
AI agents that integrate diverse data about land, climate, and agriculture, and input from human collaborators, to provide broad perspective and expertise on managing functioning ecosystems.
Forests as carbon capture solutions. Converting excess biomass (wildfire fuel reduction) into biochar can improve soils and store carbon in the soil for centuries. Biochar production in fire-prone landscapes provides multiple benefits and a range of technologies can assist the process.
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.
The history of land and its people is often spread across fragmented primary sources in varying formats. Modern AI can reduce the work to collect, structure, and synthesize historical and cultural source data.
Understanding and shaping how water moves through landscapes, managing dry seasons in the era of climate change, and regenerating soils.
Which plants and animals live on the sites, and how can restoration work improve their diverse, vibrant living ecosystems? Tracking and understanding how species respond to restoration over time (with the help of AI).
Keeping what is learned about a site's soils, water, species and fire history useful across changes in owners, staff and software, through digital twins of DeepForest's sites and open, privacy-screened data.
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.
Forest carbon sequestration with biochar, Wildfire resilience, Ecological restoration, Water management & soil 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.
Ecological restoration, Wildfire resilience, Water management & soil restoration
Living, measured models of DeepForest's sites, built from drone photos and 3D models, LiDAR, satellite time series, AI-managed remote sensing and dated field records, and kept for years so active management (thinning, fuel breaks, biochar, seeding and grazing) can be planned, tested and tracked: where the work was done, how the land responds, and the carbon it holds, as estimates.
Generational continuity & open datasets, Agentic land stewardship, AI-powered land monitoring
Short entries from the sites as the work happens.
Video A slow drone pass at sunset over the canyon of San Domingo Creek, late in the dry season: the meadows in the valley have gone gold, while…
+1 photo Manzanita (Arctostaphylos sp.) is growing back on a slope at Woodland Hilltop Arbory, where the old thicket was masticated in 2022. At…
Late in the afternoon of December 23, 2025, new green grass was coming up through the flattened, bleached thatch of last summer's growth…
+1 photo 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…
+1 photo 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…
+1 photo 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…
+1 photo Two skunks crossed a grassy track on the hilltop at Woodland Hilltop Arbory at about 8:20 pm on November 21, 2025, caught in the beam of a…
+1 photo Rain was falling on the creek at San Domingo Arbory around midday on November 16, 2025, ringing the pools with drops. Water ran fast…
Supporters
Many of our projects are funded directly by private supporters. Our patron circle has access to project sites, members-only events and opportunities to work directly with DeepForest staff, sites, and technology.
Request information or ask to joinResearchers
Bring your lab to a private, instrumented field site: site access, data streams and light field support.
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Try sensors, drones, robots and models on our project sites, alongside the people who manage them.
Field testing