Wildfire Resilient Landscapes
Advancing research, policy, and practical solutions to restore ecological resilience across human and natural landscapes.
Who We Are
Who are we
Wildfire Resilient Landscapes is a systems-focused initiative dedicated to advancing long-term environmental resilience across urban, ecological, and fire-prone landscapes. The organization examines how continuity systems, ecological processes, infrastructure networks, governance structures, and long-term stewardship interact to shape resilience under increasing environmental and operational stress.
Its work focuses on urban canopy renewal, fire-adapted landscapes, continuity-based resilience planning, infrastructure coordination, and lifecycle stewardship systems that support long-term environmental stability and adaptive capacity.
Wildfire Resilient Landscapes advances integrated approaches to resilience through interdisciplinary systems analysis, policy research, continuity diagnostics, and applied resilience frameworks examining how fragmentation, declining recovery capacity, governance instability, and continuity disruption contribute to long-term ecological and operational vulnerability across interconnected systems environments.
Current work includes the development of the WRL Systems Diagnostic Framework for Resilience and Urban Tree Renewal for Resilience (UTRR), which examines how unresolved continuity gaps influence canopy decline, infrastructure conflict, adaptive strain, wildfire vulnerability, and long-term landscape degradation over time.
The organization approaches resilience not solely as emergency response or hazard mitigation, but as the long-term ability of systems to maintain continuity, coordination, recovery capacity, adaptive flexibility, and operational sustainability across changing environmental conditions.
Founder Deborah J. Hanson
Wildfire Resilient Landscapes was founded in response to observable changes within the urban and ecological fabric of Los Angeles. Over time, recurring patterns became increasingly visible: mature trees removed and left as persistent stumps, declining canopy continuity, expanding heat exposure, fragmented landscape stewardship, and the gradual loss of environmental conditions that once helped stabilize neighborhood ecosystems.
What initially appeared as isolated landscape change increasingly reflected broader structural pressures involving infrastructure systems, governance coordination, maintenance continuity, environmental adaptation, and long-term resilience planning across interconnected urban systems.
Deborah J. Hanson is the Founder of Wildfire Resilient Landscapes and the developer of the WRL Systems Diagnostic Framework for Resilience, an interdisciplinary systems-oriented framework examining how continuity gaps, fragmentation, declining recovery capacity, and adaptive strain shape long-term resilience across environmental, infrastructural, governance, institutional, and operational systems.
Her work focuses on continuity systems, urban canopy regeneration, lifecycle stewardship, governance fragmentation, resilience diagnostics, infrastructure continuity, and long-term systems sustainability under prolonged environmental and operational stress conditions.
She holds a Master of Public Administration from California State University, Northridge, where her graduate work focused on nonprofit governance, institutional resilience, and financial sustainability, and a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Her current research and writing increasingly examine how systems maintain stability, adapt under stress, fragment over time, and recover across interconnected operational environments. This work includes the development of Urban Tree Renewal for Resilience (UTRR), continuity-centered resilience diagnostics, fragmentation analysis, infrastructure continuity systems, and broader WRL policy and systems research focused on long-term environmental resilience.
Wildfire Resilient Landscapes advances a systems-based approach to resilience and landscape regeneration, integrating ecological systems analysis, governance systems, continuity planning, infrastructure coordination, lifecycle stewardship, and adaptive resilience frameworks.
What began as noticing persistent tree stumps throughout neighborhood landscapes gradually evolved into a broader interdisciplinary effort to better understand the structural systems shaping how communities maintain resilience, absorb stress, recover continuity, and adapt to long-term environmental change.