Land Immersion: Red Dot Ranch Pescadero

Request to Attend Here

For Trellis Impact 2026, Red Dot Ranch, Illumine.Earth and ProgramEarth invite you to experience a land restoration project deeply rooted in relationships: with the living Earth, with Indigenous ancestral knowledge, and with the local community working to bring a diverse landscape located on Raymahtush territory back to its full splendor. Experience a walk around the lands, a biochar walkthrough, and conversations about the native flora and fauna returning through the community’s care, and how you can get involved.

What you can look forward to:

🌱 A firsthand encounter with Traditional Ecological Knowledge in practice guided by Sarah Moncada, M.A., Association of Ramaytush Director of Native Ecology.

🔥 A walkthrough of community biochar production and its role in coastal soil restoration

💧 An exploration of seem (the ecological and cultural heart of the site) and a grounded conversation about what water replenishment means

🤝 Meaningful connection with the stewards and community members who are doing this work every day

🌾 An honest look at the funding models that make long-term land stewardship possible

This is an invitation to witness restoration as an ongoing practice, and to consider what your resources, relationships, and leadership could make possible here.

Schedule:

8:00 am – Charter shuttle departs from Moscone West, San Francisco (approx. 1 hour and 15 min to Pescadero)

9:15 am – Welcome. Land acknowledgment by Sara Moncada, M.A., Director of Ecology. Introductions

9:30 am – Sara Moncada speaks to the power of TEK: seep restoration zone, native habitat corridors

10:00 am – Biochar demonstration: Charpallet (how we do pyrolysis), biomass walkthrough, soil application site, and some ways to sample soil

10:30 am – Roundtable: What do water-based funding pathways look like in the current climate

11:00 am – Charter shuttle leaves Red Dot Ranch

12:15 pm – Arrive at Moscone West, San Francisco

About the Land

Eighteen acres of nested rolling hills with an ocean view offer the space for climate innovation pilots, where companies and researchers can test materials in real conditions, prototype new systems, and connect sustainability goals to physical landscapes. This land sits within the ancestral territory of the Ramaytush people. The land carries both depletion and the memory of a thriving ecosystem, with a portion intensively grazed in the 1950s, topsoil compacted and hollowed out, and alongside it an intact native grassland seedbank and a natural seep that still knows how to hold water. In spring, that potential is visible in the wildflowers: poppies, iris, paintbrush, baby-blue-eyes, blue-eyed grass, and the coastal blooms that remind us this is the most biodiverse region in Pescadero.

What are we up to? 

Biomass -> Biochar -> Soil -> Water -> Crops -> Materials -> Housing

Biochar

Red Dot Ranch is converting excess biomass into biochar using community-scale systems, turning fire risk into a soil-building resource informed by TEK with advisors like the Ramaytush. They will field-test single-source and blended biochar feedstocks from typical on-site biomass to build missing data for region-specific, replicable soil recipes using eucalyptus, Douglas fir, and coyote bush.

Land OS

ProgramEarth, alongside the Ranch and Minnesota College of Art & Design is building a real-time environmental intelligence system that turns working land into a continuous feedback loop. Using edge sensors, geospatial modeling, and digital twins, it tracks ecosystem responses to restoration as it happens, keeping data sovereign at each site while enabling agentic AI to learn from ground-truthed outcomes and scale predictive climate models.

About Red Dot Ranch

The Red Dot Ranch Foundation 501(c)(3) was founded to help establish a living blueprint for regeneration. They are a working farm growing food, water systems, and building materials. Red Dot Ranch is developing a new model of working lands that produces not only food, but carbon-storing materials and climate-resilient infrastructure: a working landscape as a climate innovation platform.

About Illumine.Earth

illumine.earth exists to help leaders flourish as they do Big Good Fast – so the way we lead, live, build, and transform systems can move toward a flourishing future, where all people and nature thrive in equilibrium.

About ProgramEarth

Program Earth 501(c)(3) champions the next generation of developers to build talent, foster networks, and expand industry commitment to holistic climate solutions, innovating environmental stewardship and corporate sustainability. They do this by supporting the tech behind climate projects that empower local communities while making a global impact.

Our Advisors

We are grateful to be guided by the Association of Ramaytush as our educational tribal advisor. Sara Moncada of the Association of Ramaytush serves on the advisory board of Red Dot Ranch.

What to Wear/Bring

• Dress to get a little dirty. Wear closed-toe shoes and pants.
• Depending on the weather, it might be good to bring a light windbreaker, sunglasses, and a hat.
• There will be refill stations, please bring water bottles.
• Poison oak does exist, although not on the cleared paths we’ll be walking through. There will be a station to wash up in case you make contact.

Accessibility

The farmland is not ADA-accessible. Participants will be sent a waiver after registration.

There is a slight hill from the roadside to the plot, and we will have golf carts available for those who would prefer that over hiking. We will have a mild hike through some rolling hills. There will be a porta-potty on the premises.