On one of her first visits to a burn site, Boston University biologist Jennifer Bhatnagar walked across a hillside that had been stripped bare by flames. "There were black trees everywhere, little resprouting of trees, little new vegetation," she recalls. That scorched slope in northern California became the starting point for a project that is quietly teaching us how forests — especially the ones right next to our homes — might survive a hotter, more fire-prone future.
Wildfires are no longer rare disasters. They are bigger, more frequent, and far more expensive — the US Geological Survey puts the yearly cost of damage and recovery at $424 billion. Last year's Los Angeles fires alone killed more than 30 people and ran up a $60 billion bill. The Eaton Fire in California was even more brutal, claiming 19 lives and destroying more than 9,000 homes and businesses.
That devastation is exactly what Bhatnagar studies. Since the summer of 2023 — a year that saw more than 7,000 wildfires in the state — she and her team have explored how wildfire, cities, and ecological restoration shape the way northern California's woodlands come back to life.
But Bhatnagar doesn't focus on the trees themselves. She studies what lies beneath them. As an expert on soil microbiomes — the invisible communities of bacteria and fungi that recycle nutrients and keep plants healthy — she calls these soil life forms "the hidden engineers of the forest." The question is how these underground engineers respond when fire tears through.
The project grew from an unlikely meeting. After a chance encounter, Bhatnagar was invited by Napa Valley landowners Frank Naeymi-Rad and Theresa Kepic to study their 18.5 acres. The couple, both Midwesterners, were curious whether truffles could be grown there, and they wanted to understand how to care for their land. "You can grow anything in California," a gardener once told Kepic. But they wanted to know why.
As Bhatnagar walked their property and the surrounding burns, her questions expanded far beyond mushrooms. Why did some scorched areas recover quickly while others stayed bare? Why were bay and maple trees bouncing back when oaks and redwoods were not? Why had one burnt patch become covered with non-native grass? Most importantly, which restoration techniques would help these landscapes thrive decades from now?
With support from the couple's Ecotechnology and Landscape Restoration Research Fund, Bhatnagar launched a project testing novel ways to assist recovery. "We don't fully understand how urban ecosystems are affected by climate-induced changes like intensifying wildfires," she says. "This research is filling these knowledge gaps directly."
What the team learns will guide ecologists and land managers in California and beyond, in the growing places where wildfire meets neighborhoods. It's a reminder that helping a forest heal also means helping the people who live beside it. And it all began with a walk through the ashes, asking the soil what it needed.