Reforestation activities typically involve planting trees in degraded areas. However, tree planting is resource-intensive, requiring labor for the planting and more importantly nurturing of the seedlings, and may be expensive and limited by seedling supply. Moreover, there is always a question of whether the right plant species (i.e., native rather than non-native economically important species) are being planted to benefit biodiversity.

The Philippines is often hit by tropical cyclones (TCs), which bring heavy rainfall that can cause floods and landslides. More often than not, the patterns of TCs repeat. For instance, if a typhoon with a certain amount of rainfall passes through Central Luzon, a similar typhoon that will pass through Central Luzon again in the future is likely to have the same amount and distribution of rainfall.

Scientists around the world have extensively studied the expansion of laser-produced plasma (LPP) and the shock waves it generates in a background gas. However, little attention has been given to how the reflected shock wave—one that bounces back from a surface—affects the expanding plasma, despite its potential impact on LPP behavior.