Restoring Damaged Lands

Now it's time to bring your woods back to health.

When we think of nature, we often think of cycles: the seasons changing, or plants blooming and dying. Nature seems like something that endlessly renews itself and doesn’t need much help to do it.

Your woods share in that ability to renew. Many trees have adapted to occasional disturbances and have ways to heal themselves when they’re injured, whether the damage is due to a natural disaster or human activity.

But when too many disturbances come together, your woods may need a little help to get healthy again. A particularly intense fire, flood or other storm can cause lasting damage that makes it harder for your forest to recover. The changing climate can also throw things out of whack, by increasing the frequency and intensity of droughts, hurricanes and other events your trees could normally withstand. 

In these cases of severe damage or disturbance, you can help restore your forest more quickly and completely than it would on its own.  

In this section, you’ll learn

Restoration can be a big project, but remember—good professional help is available. You’ll find more information about that on our restoration resources page.

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