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Gresham, Oregon

East county: a creek, a corridor, the buttes and the mountain behind them.

Gresham is where the metro meets the Sandy River and the foothills of Mount Hood. Johnson Creek and the Springwater Corridor run through it, the buttes stand over it, and east Multnomah County's farms, nurseries and fire districts begin at its edge.

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The ground

Gresham and Multnomah County

Johnson Creek crosses the city from east to west with the Springwater Corridor trail beside it, and the volcanic buttes, Gresham Butte, Walters Hill, Powell Butte at the Portland line, rise out of the flat ground with forest on their sides. East of town the land opens into berry farms and nurseries toward Troutdale and the Sandy River, and beyond that the Columbia Gorge and the Mount Hood National Forest, where the 2017 Eagle Creek fire burned the Gorge above Troutdale and the 2020 Riverside fire ran through Clackamas County to the south.

Who buys mapping here

  • City of Gresham: Urban Design and Planning, Environmental Services, Parks, the GIS group; Troutdale, Fairview and Wood Village
  • Multnomah County: Emergency Management, Transportation, Land Use Planning
  • Johnson Creek Watershed Council and the East Multnomah Soil and Water Conservation District
  • Gresham Fire and Emergency Services and the Corbett and Sandy districts east of town
  • Portland General Electric, whose lines and the Bull Run corridor pass through
  • Mount Hood Community College and the Mount Hood National Forest's Zigzag and Columbia Gorge districts
  • Berry farms and nurseries on the east county ground, and the developers on the buttes' lower slopes

Getting there

From Medford

Four and a half hours up the freeway, or an hour in the air to Portland International, which is fifteen minutes from Gresham. It pairs with Portland on one trip.

The public lidar

What exists, and what it misses

The metro's public lidar covers Gresham and the county keeps good floodplain mapping along Johnson Creek from it. The buttes and the creek corridor are where the questions are finer than that data: which trees on the slope are dying, how high the canopy stands over the trail, what the restoration plantings along the creek have done since they went in.

What we would fly

The lanes that fit Gresham

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
Three dimensional view of a farm elevation model with fields, tree mounds, and the pond in relief.
Farm Planning
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

Every service

Everything we do, in Gresham

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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

No east county job yet. The nearest proof is a river corridor classified by species, the Eugene ash inventory, and a restoration corridor counted tree by tree.

Riparian canopy polygons drawn as coloured outlines by dominant species over a true colour orthomosaic of a river corridor.

Forestry 2025

Riparian species and cold seeps on the Scott River

Cascade Stream Solutions, with a botanist leading field identification. We flew it as their subcontractor and reported to them.

Fourteen riparian species classified across 423 acres of river corridor, with thermal mapping that pointed to groundwater fed cold seeps.

Read the case
Crown polygons and treetops over the canopy height model and orthomosaic in Eugene.

Forestry 2025 to 2026

Finding every Oregon ash before the borer does

City of Eugene, Parks and Open Space

12,632 crowns classified across 390 acres of riparian canopy. 5,261 of them Oregon ash.

Read the case
Overview of the Bear Creek corridor through Phoenix from the June 2025 LiDAR: the greenway, the creek, and the highway with the young planting in place.

Property 2025

A planting corridor through Phoenix, tree by tree

City of Phoenix

The year one record for 98 trees the city planted where the Almeda fire burned through Phoenix, from drone LiDAR and RGB flown 65 days after planting.

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

Gresham, the creek and the buttes.

A canopy count for the city, a restoration reach for the council, or a slope the fire district worries about. Send the boundary and we will add it to the Portland trip.

Talk to Eli

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