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Spokane, Washington

Dry side pine, a river through town, and the fires of 2023 still fresh.

The Gray and Oregon Road fires burned hundreds of homes west and north of Spokane in August 2023, in the kind of ponderosa interface we map structure by structure in southern Oregon. Spokane also has a river, a park system that runs on it, the Palouse wheat country to the south and timber to the north.

Talk to Eli All of Washington

The ground

Spokane and Spokane County

The Spokane River falls through the middle of the city and runs west past Riverside State Park into the basalt scablands. North and east the pine and fir forest comes right into the suburbs, Mead, Colbert, Nine Mile Falls, and keeps going to the Colville National Forest and the Idaho line; Mount Spokane stands over it all. South the Palouse begins, rolling wheat and lentils to the horizon. Medical Lake and Elk, where the 2023 fires did their damage, are both within half an hour of downtown.

Who buys mapping here

  • City of Spokane: Parks and Recreation and its urban forestry program, Public Works, the GIS group; Spokane Valley, Cheney, Medical Lake, Liberty Lake
  • Spokane County: Emergency Management, Building and Planning, the county fire districts, Spokane County Fire District 8 and the others in the interface
  • Washington State Department of Natural Resources, Northeast Region, and the Colville National Forest
  • Avista and its wildfire mitigation program; Inland Power and Light
  • Spokane Conservation District and the Spokane River Forum
  • The Spokane Tribe of Indians and the Kalispel Tribe and their forestry and fisheries programs
  • Gonzaga University, Eastern Washington University, Washington State University Spokane and the Riverpoint campus
  • Palouse wheat and lentil growers; the timber owners north of the city

Getting there

From Medford

Spokane is the far end of our range by road, nine to ten hours from Medford across central Oregon, so we fly in and rent a truck, or stage a longer eastern Washington trip through Yakima and the Tri Cities.

The public lidar

What exists, and what it misses

Spokane County has state portal lidar over the city and the forested north, and the county and the conservation district use it for planning. The 2023 fire footprints, the interface neighbourhoods and the utility corridors now need the finer picture: fuels and exposure per structure, treated units measured, and the pine stands watched for beetle and drought mortality.

What we would fly

The lanes that fit Spokane

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
Three dimensional view of a farm elevation model with fields, tree mounds, and the pond in relief.
Farm Planning
Orthomosaic of a creek corridor through Phoenix, Oregon, clipped to the project area.
Property

Every service

Everything we do, in Spokane

  • 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.

  • Night infrared on active fires Start here

    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.

  • Forestry Start here

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

  • 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.

  • Rivers, riparian and habitat

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

  • 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

Behind the offer for eastern Washington: the Ashland citywide fuels and exposure numbers, East Evans Creek flown through a season of nights, and a watershed of pines and firs classed by health.

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
Night thermal map of the East Evans Creek fire, scattered heat sources glowing across burned ground.

Wildland Fire 2026

East Evans Creek, a season inside one fire

Oregon Department of Forestry

Fifteen nights on one incident across three weeks, eight divisions, and a heat map in the GIS specialist's hands before the morning briefing.

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

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

Spokane: the interface after 2023.

A fire district's planning area, a utility corridor, a county fuels project or a pine stand. Send the boundary and the season and we will plan the eastern Washington trip around it.

Talk to Eli

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