2026 Theses Master's

Archives of Feeling: Making Restoration Legible within the National Forest Foundation’s Restoration System in the Santa Catalina Foothills

Harvey, Christian

This capstone examines how ecological restoration in the Santa Catalina foothills of southern Arizona can become publicly legible within a rapidly changing wildland–urban interface (WUI). Conducted in partnership with the National Forest Foundation (NFF), the study addresses a central institutional challenge: although restoration systems in the Coronado National Forest are operationally advanced and increasingly coordinated, there is no equivalent framework for translating restoration into sustained public understanding, stewardship behavior, or long-term philanthropic alignment.

The research situates this challenge within the ecological transformation of the Sonoran Desert foothills, where invasive buffelgrass has altered historical fire regimes by creating continuous fuel networks capable of carrying high-intensity wildfire through landscapes once resistant to large-scale fire spread. The 2020 Bighorn Fire, which burned nearly 120,000 acres in the Santa Catalina Mountains, functions as a system-level stress test exposing the interconnected risks of invasive species expansion, watershed instability, biodiversity loss, post-fire flooding, and expanding WUI exposure.

Findings suggest that restoration in the foothills is not fragmented operationally, but interpretively. Ecological restoration, recreation infrastructure, cultural stewardship, and public engagement exist simultaneously, yet largely through separate institutional mandates rather than as a coherent place-based system. In response, the capstone advances Archives of Feeling as a guiding philosophy for restoration that positions the landscape itself as a living archive of ecological change, institutional action, and cultural memory.