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Chico, California

Orchards on the flat, fire on the ridge, a park the size of a town.

Butte County lost Paradise to the Camp fire in 2018 and has been rebuilding, replanting and remapping its ridges since. Chico below it has one of the largest city parks in the country, orchards in every direction, and a creek that drains the fire country into town.

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The ground

Chico and Butte County

Chico lies on the east side of the Sacramento Valley where Big Chico Creek comes out of the foothills through Bidwell Park, thousands of acres of oak and sycamore and creek running from downtown up into the canyon. The valley around it is almonds, walnuts, rice toward the river and the orchards of Durham and Dayton. East, the ridges climb through the Camp fire scar at Paradise and Magalia toward the Plumas country the North Complex and the Dixie fire burned in 2020 and 2021.

Who buys mapping here

  • City of Chico: Public Works, Parks and the Bidwell Park and Playground Commission, the Urban Forest Manager
  • Town of Paradise and the Paradise Recreation and Park District, rebuilding since 2018
  • Butte County: Fire Safe Council, Office of Emergency Management, Public Works, the county GIS
  • CAL FIRE's Butte Unit and the Chico and Paradise fire departments
  • Butte County Resource Conservation District and the Big Chico Creek watershed groups
  • California State University, Chico, its ecological reserves and the university farm
  • Pacific Gas and Electric's foothill and valley lines
  • Almond, walnut and rice growers, the water districts and the levee reclamation districts
  • The Lassen and Plumas national forests and the BLM lands on the ridges

Getting there

From Medford

About four and a half hours from Medford, down Interstate 5 and across to Highway 99. We base in Chico for several days and cover the ridge, the valley and the orchards.

The public lidar

What exists, and what it misses

Butte County was flown after the Camp fire and the valley has federal lidar for floodplain and levee work, so the terrain is well known. What the rebuilding ridge, the park and the orchards need is current vegetation: ladder fuels around rebuilt homes, canopy and health in the park, drainage and canopy in an orchard block after a wet winter.

What we would fly

The lanes that fit Chico

Infrared heat map over a lake and forest: heat perimeter, isolated heat points classed by temperature, and 50, 100, and 200 foot mopup buffers.
Wildland Fire
Three dimensional view of a farm elevation model with fields, tree mounds, and the pond in relief.
Farm Planning
Post harvest assessment map for the Oregon Department of Forestry: downed woody debris volume by decay class in one acre cells, with species of standing trees.
Forestry
Orthomosaic of a creek corridor through Phoenix, Oregon, clipped to the project area.
Property

Every service

Everything we do, in Chico

  • Wildfire fuels and CWPP support Start here

    Canopy height, ladder fuels and structure exposure for a Community Wildfire Protection Plan, citywide when the plan needs it.

  • Farm planning Start here

    Terrain, drainage low points, slope and sun, canopy, and plan overlays drawn on a current orthomosaic of the whole farm.

  • Tree inventory and canopy Start here

    Every crown in a city, a park system or a campus, with height, species and health, checked against trees on the ground.

  • GIS consulting and data

    Hosted data, web maps and dashboards, Survey123 field apps, scripted reporting, and the cleanup of the data you already have.

  • Drone LiDAR

    Bare earth under the canopy, contours, surface and canopy height models, classified point clouds and line corridors, PPK controlled and checked.

  • Forestry

    Stand inventory, species and health classes, downed woody debris counted and measured from the air, post harvest monitoring.

  • Rivers, riparian and habitat

    Species along a river corridor, wetlands and habitat, cold water seeps found with thermal, and baselines for restoration work.

  • Night infrared on active fires

    Heat perimeters and hotspots in the incident team’s hands before the morning briefing. The pipeline that builds the package runs at the UAS Wildland Fire Collaborative, the nonprofit we founded.

  • Property and site design

    Design ready contours, tree points and surface models, in the formats and coordinate system the engineer specifies.

  • Multispectral imaging

    Five calibrated bands, vegetation indices, and species and health classification with its accuracy reported.

  • Thermal infrared

    A calibrated temperature in every pixel, flown as a mapping mission: fire heat classified in degrees, prescribed fire mortality, cold water seeps.

  • Federal and agency work

    Fire infrared, LiDAR on abandoned mine lands and forest data for federal land managers. Registered in SAM.gov.

Nearest work

Butte County is not on the log yet. Behind the offer: the Ashland fuels and exposure numbers that carried a wildfire plan, a nursery planned on drone LiDAR terrain, and a fire flown for eleven nights.

Ladder fuel classification in a LiDAR point cloud on a Medford demonstration property, with a ground photo of the stand inset.

Forestry 2024 to 2025

Citywide LiDAR for the Ashland CWPP

City of Ashland

Citywide drone LiDAR that gave the 2025 Ashland Community Wildfire Protection Plan its ladder fuel and structure exposure numbers.

Read the case
Three dimensional overview of the farm elevation model draped over the landscape.

Farm Planning 2023

A farm plan on real ground

Plant Oregon with Oregon Urban Rural and Community Forestry, a tree nursery in development

Terrain, ponds, tree mounds, and a site plan drawn on a current ortho of the whole farm.

Read the case
Night infrared of the Fielder Mountain fire on its first night, more than a thousand separate heat sources glowing across dark burned ground.

Wildland Fire 2026

Fielder Mountain, eleven nights as the heat went out

Oregon Department of Forestry

Eleven nights of infrared on one steep fire in August 2026. The heat sources on the map fell from 2,852 on the first night to 58 on the last.

Read the case

The record

Every project we have published

Forestry and trees

Rivers and habitat

Wildfire fuels and planning

Night infrared on fires

Terrain and site design

Farm planning

Chico and the ridge, on one trip.

A fuels planning area above town, a park canopy count, or an orchard block to plan. Send the boundary and when the data is needed.

Talk to Eli

Email info@roguerecon.net or call 808 298 6290.