Rogue Reconnaissance
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Redding, California

Two and a half hours down the freeway, into Carr fire country.

Redding is the first big California city south of our base, and its fire history is written in the hills west of town. The Scott River corridor we classified by species lies between here and Medford, and the same flights serve the city's parks, the county's fuels planning and the engineers building on the slopes.

Talk to Eli All of California

The ground

Redding and Shasta County

The Sacramento River comes out of Shasta Lake and runs through the middle of Redding under the Sundial Bridge, with the Sacramento River Trail along it. West of town the oak and chaparral hills rise toward Whiskeytown, where the 2018 Carr fire came down into the city's neighbourhoods, and the 2020 Zogg fire burned to the south west. North is the lake, the dam and the Shasta Trinity National Forest; south, the orchards and pasture of Anderson and Cottonwood.

Who buys mapping here

  • City of Redding: Public Works, Community Services and Parks, Redding Electric Utility, the GIS group
  • Shasta County: Office of Emergency Services, Public Works, Resource Management
  • Redding Fire Department, the Shasta County Fire Department and CAL FIRE's Shasta Trinity Unit
  • The Shasta Trinity National Forest, Whiskeytown National Recreation Area and the BLM Redding Field Office
  • Western Shasta Resource Conservation District and the county's fire safe councils
  • Shasta College and the Turtle Bay Exploration Park grounds
  • Orchard and ranch operations toward Anderson and Cottonwood, and the engineers rebuilding in the fire footprint

Getting there

From Medford

About two and a half hours south of Medford on Interstate 5, over the Siskiyou Summit. A day trip for a site; an incident order the same night.

The public lidar

What exists, and what it misses

Northern California has federal 3DEP lidar over much of Shasta County and post fire flights over parts of the Carr footprint, built for terrain, floodplain and erosion work. A fire safe council ranking parcels, a city looking at its park canopy or a developer on a burned slope needs this season's vegetation at the parcel scale, which is a current drone flight.

What we would fly

The lanes that fit Redding

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
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

Every service

Everything we do, in Redding

  • 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.

  • Property and site design Start here

    Design ready contours, tree points and surface models, in the formats and coordinate system the engineer specifies.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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 Shasta County case published yet. The nearest proof is the Scott River corridor one county north, the BLM mine sites to the south west, and a 2026 incident flown night after night.

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
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
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

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

Redding, the first stop south.

A parcel on the west side, a park, a fuels planning area or a resource order. Send the ground and the date and we will be over the summit by morning.

Talk to Eli

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