Rogue Reconnaissance
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Vancouver, Washington

Across the Columbia from Portland, with its own trees to count.

Vancouver and Clark County sit across the river from Portland and are often mapped as an afterthought to it. They have their own urban forestry program, their own public utility, a county legacy lands program and a river valley running up to the Gifford Pinchot, and they are an hour closer to Medford than Seattle.

Talk to Eli All of Washington

The ground

Vancouver and Clark County

The city fronts the Columbia with the port, Fort Vancouver and the waterfront, and spreads north and east onto the plateau toward Battle Ground and Camas. The East Fork Lewis and the Washougal come down out of the Gifford Pinchot National Forest through farms and timber; the Ridgefield refuge and Vancouver Lake lie on the river to the west. Salmon Creek and Burnt Bridge Creek thread the suburbs. The 2020 Big Hollow fire burned in the forest an hour north east.

Who buys mapping here

  • City of Vancouver: Urban Forestry, Parks, Recreation and Cultural Services, Public Works, the GIS group; Camas, Washougal, Battle Ground, Ridgefield
  • Clark County: Public Works and Clean Water, Legacy Lands and Parks, Emergency Management, the county GIS
  • Clark Public Utilities and its stream restoration and vegetation programs
  • Clark Conservation District, Columbia Land Trust, the Lower Columbia Estuary Partnership
  • The Cowlitz Indian Tribe and its natural resources department
  • Clark County Fire and Rescue and the district stations in the foothills; the Gifford Pinchot National Forest
  • Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge and the Port of Vancouver
  • Nurseries, berry farms and dairies on the plateau and in the Lewis valley

Getting there

From Medford

About four hours and forty minutes from Medford up Interstate 5, just over the bridge from Portland. A Clark County job rides on any Portland trip, or stands alone as a long day.

The public lidar

What exists, and what it misses

Clark County flies its own lidar and shares it through the state portal, among the best county programs in Washington, so the terrain and floodplain questions are answered. The county and the city now ask about canopy and condition tree by tree, about restoration reaches on the creeks, and about the farms and nurseries that want this winter's drainage rather than a decade old surface.

What we would fly

The lanes that fit Vancouver

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 Vancouver

  • 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.

  • Farm planning Start here

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

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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

Clark County has not had a flight from us yet. The closest demonstrations are Eugene counted crown by crown, a river corridor classified by species, and a nursery planned on drone LiDAR terrain.

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
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
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

Vancouver, the near side of Washington.

A canopy count for the city, a creek reach for the district, a farm on the plateau or a site on the waterfront. Send the boundary and it goes on the next trip up the valley.

Talk to Eli

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