Rogue Reconnaissance
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Oakland, California

The hills that burned in 1991, measured for the next plan.

The Oakland hills fire of 1991 is the reason the East Bay has the largest regional park fuels program in the country, a city vegetation management plan, and a public that reads fuel maps. Structure by structure exposure and canopy from drone LiDAR is the data those plans ask for, and the Ashland work is its proof.

Talk to Eli All of California

The ground

Oakland and Alameda County and Contra Costa County

Oakland runs from the bay and the port up through the flats to a ridge of eucalyptus, Monterey pine, oak and bay laurel where the Tunnel fire burned nearly three thousand homes in 1991. Above and behind the city are the East Bay Regional Park District's lands, Tilden to Redwood to Chabot, the East Bay Municipal Utility District's watershed around the reservoirs, and the University of California's hill campus. Lake Merritt sits in the middle of town; the Caldecott tunnel carries the freeway through the ridge.

Who buys mapping here

  • City of Oakland: Fire Department and its vegetation management program, Public Works tree services, Parks, the GIS group
  • East Bay Regional Park District and its fuels management program across Alameda and Contra Costa counties
  • East Bay Municipal Utility District and its watershed lands
  • The Oakland Firesafe Council, the Diablo Fire Safe Council and the Hills Emergency Forum agencies
  • University of California, Berkeley: the hill campus, Strawberry Canyon and the Lawrence lab lands
  • Alameda County and Contra Costa County, and the cities along the ridge: Berkeley, Piedmont, Orinda, Moraga, Lafayette
  • The Port of Oakland and the East Bay's transit and highway agencies with trees on their right of way
  • Pacific Gas and Electric's lines through the hills

Getting there

From Medford

Six and a half hours up and down Interstate 5, or a flight into Oakland International. The East Bay shares a trip with San Francisco; the regional parks alone can fill it.

The public lidar

What exists, and what it misses

The East Bay has public lidar and the park district and the utility have flown their own for fuels planning, so the terrain and the broad vegetation picture exist. What the ordinances and the grant reports ask for next is parcel scale: ladder fuels and canopy over roofs in the fire zone, treated units measured against untreated ones, and the eucalyptus stands tracked over time.

What we would fly

The lanes that fit Oakland

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
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 Oakland

  • 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.

  • 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 Start here

    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.

  • Farm planning

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

  • 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

The East Bay has not had a flight from us. The proof travels: the Ashland citywide fuels data, a watershed of conifers classed by health, and bare earth under chaparral on BLM ground two hours north.

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
Douglas fir crowns colored by health class over the Ashland watershed orthomosaic.

Forestry 2023 to 2024

At risk, declining, dieback, dead

City of Ashland

About 30,000 Douglas fir crowns classed by health across the city's watershed lands, so the city could see the die off and act on it.

Read the case
Shaded relief of Harley Gulch from the drone LiDAR bare earth model, canyons and old workings in relief.

Property 2025

Ten abandoned mines, bare earth under the chaparral

Bat Conservation International, on Bureau of Land Management land, Ukiah Field Office

Bare earth, surface, and canopy height models over 779.4 acres of abandoned mine sites under steep chaparral, checked against the public LiDAR at 0.320 m RMSE.

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

The East Bay hills, parcel by parcel.

A fire zone to map structure by structure, a park unit to measure before and after treatment, or a watershed. Tell us which agency and what the plan needs, and we will put it on the Bay Area trip.

Talk to Eli

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