Rogue Reconnaissance
Contact

Santa Rosa, California

Wine country that burns, an hour from the mine sites we mapped.

Sonoma County has been burned three times in four years, from the Tubbs fire in Santa Rosa's own neighbourhoods to Kincade and Glass, and its planners, water agency, open space district and vineyards all buy mapping. Our BLM Ukiah mine site LiDAR is an hour north on the same highway.

Talk to Eli All of California

The ground

Santa Rosa and Sonoma County

Santa Rosa sits in the valley between the Mayacamas on the east, where Fountaingrove and Coffey Park burned in 2017, and the Laguna de Santa Rosa and the coast ranges on the west. The Russian River runs north to south through the county's vineyards, Healdsburg to Guerneville, and the hills on both sides are oak woodland, chaparral and Douglas fir that the county now manages under a vegetation ordinance. Pepperwood Preserve, Annadel and the open space district's lands are the proving grounds for fuels work here.

Who buys mapping here

  • City of Santa Rosa: Fire, Water, Parks and Recreation, Public Works, the GIS group; Healdsburg, Windsor, Sebastopol, Petaluma, Sonoma
  • Sonoma County: Permit Sonoma and its vegetation management program, Emergency Management, Regional Parks
  • Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District, Sonoma Water, Sonoma Land Trust
  • Fire Safe Sonoma, the Sonoma County Fire District and CAL FIRE's Sonoma Lake Napa Unit
  • Sonoma and Gold Ridge resource conservation districts, the Laguna de Santa Rosa Foundation, Pepperwood Preserve
  • Pacific Gas and Electric and its vegetation management program in the county
  • Santa Rosa Junior College and its Shone Farm; Sonoma State University
  • Vineyard and winery operations across the county

Getting there

From Medford

About six hours from Medford down Highway 101, or a flight to Santa Rosa or the Bay Area. We pair Sonoma with Ukiah and Mendocino County on one trip.

The public lidar

What exists, and what it misses

Sonoma County flew its own countywide lidar after the 2017 fires and keeps the best public vegetation data in the north state. Even so, that flight is a date, and fuels, canopy and vineyard questions move every season: what regrew in the Glass fire scar, how a treated unit looks three years on, where the frost pockets and the drainage are in a block being replanted.

What we would fly

The lanes that fit Santa Rosa

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 Santa Rosa

  • 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.

  • Rivers, riparian and habitat Start here

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

  • 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.

  • Tree inventory and canopy

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

  • Forestry

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

  • 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

The BLM mine site LiDAR an hour north, a whole town's fuels data behind a wildfire plan, and a farm plan on drone LiDAR terrain.

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
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

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

Sonoma County, after the fires.

A treated unit to measure, a fire scar to baseline, a vineyard block to plan or a park's canopy to count. Send the boundary and we will pair it with the next Mendocino trip.

Talk to Eli

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