Restoring the Future: Closing the Loop on Wildfire Resilience

​Wildfires are growing larger and more severe, and in many regions forests are struggling to recover. Post‑fire landscapes increasingly convert to shrublands, reducing carbon storage, water supply reliability, and biodiversity while also setting the stage for future fire risk. Wildfire mitigation work has made an impact, but it has largely focused on the front end of the fire cycle through fuels reduction. What happens after fire determines whether forests recover or convert to shrublands or grasslands, and whether the next fire is prevented. 

​This session is an opportunity to explore how post‑fire restoration can actively reduce future wildfire risk, and how insights gained after a fire can make pre‑fire planning more strategic and effective. By examining reforestation as part of a continuous cycle rather than a one‑time intervention, the conversation will focus on “closing the loop” between post‑fire recovery and pre‑fire resilience. 

​What you’ll walk away with: 

• ​A clearer frame for thinking about wildfire investment as a continuous cycle rather than discrete, siloed phases 

• ​Peer perspectives on how other funders are balancing pre-, active-, and post-fire strategies 

• ​Honest conversation about how current funding structures fall short of fostering long-term resilience 

• ​Practical insight into how post-fire conditions can sharpen earlier investment decisions and landscape-scale planning 

​To ground this discussion, American Forests, Planscape, and Spatial Informatics Group (SIG) will share how they are working to support the full reforestation pipeline, from post‑fire assessment through prioritization and workforce planning, through a new Reforestation Module within the Planscape platform. Dr. Libby Pansing will walk through the v1.0 wireframe as a concrete example of how data, planning tools, and funding decisions can better align across pre‑ and post‑fire contexts. 

​The majority of the session will be a peer-centered roundtable designed for shared learning, candid exchange, and in-depth cross-sector conversation.  

​Breakfast will be provided.