Rogue Reconnaissance
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Seattle, Washington

A city that measures its canopy every few years, tree by tree this time.

Seattle publishes a canopy assessment, runs the largest urban forest restoration partnership in the country through its parks, and owns two mountain watersheds. Crown by crown inventory from the air is the next resolution for all three, and the Eugene work is the method.

Talk to Eli All of Washington

The ground

Seattle and King County

Seattle is hills between two bodies of water, Puget Sound and Lake Washington, with greenbelts in every ravine and large forested parks, Discovery, Seward, Carkeek, Schmitz, where volunteers have been pulling ivy and planting conifers under the Green Seattle Partnership for nearly twenty years. The Duwamish comes in from the south through the industrial flats. East of the lake the suburbs climb into the Cascade foothills, and beyond Issaquah and North Bend the city's own drinking water comes off the Cedar River and the Tolt, in watersheds the utility manages as forest.

Who buys mapping here

  • City of Seattle: Parks and Recreation and the Green Seattle Partnership, the Department of Transportation urban forestry program, the Office of Sustainability and Environment
  • Seattle Public Utilities and the Cedar River and Tolt watersheds; Seattle City Light and its transmission corridors
  • King County: Parks, the Department of Natural Resources and Parks, the Flood Control District, Emergency Management
  • Puget Sound Energy on the east side; the Port of Seattle
  • The University of Washington and its campus and forest lands
  • Forterra, the Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust, the King Conservation District
  • Bellevue, Redmond, Kirkland, Issaquah, Renton, Kent and the other King County cities with tree codes
  • The Snoqualmie Valley farms and the Snoqualmie Tribe and Muckleshoot Tribe land programs

Getting there

From Medford

Seattle is a full day north by road, seven and a half hours from Medford, or two hours in the air to SeaTac with the aircraft checked as freight. We book King County as a week and fill it with several agencies' sites.

The public lidar

What exists, and what it misses

King County and the state's lidar portal cover the whole county, some of it at high density, and the city has flown its canopy assessments from aerial imagery. The gap is the tree list itself: a crown by crown record with species and condition for the park forests, the street trees and the watershed stands, at a resolution and a date each program can plan on.

What we would fly

The lanes that fit Seattle

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
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

Every service

Everything we do, in Seattle

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Wildfire fuels and CWPP support

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

  • 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

We have not flown King County. What stands in for it: Eugene counted crown by crown, a watershed of conifers classed by health, and a river corridor classified by species.

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
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
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

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

Seattle, booked as a week.

A park forest, a watershed stand, a street tree district or a canopy number for the next assessment. Tell us which program is asking and we will build the week around it.

Talk to Eli

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