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Sacramento, California

The City of Trees, counted; the capital that buys the maps.

Sacramento calls itself the City of Trees and means it, with a canopy program, a tree foundation and a parkway along the American River that runs the length of the city. It is also where California's resource agencies sit. Tree inventory, canopy numbers, GIS and farm terrain are the flights that fit.

Talk to Eli All of California

The ground

Sacramento and Sacramento County and Yolo County and Placer County

Two rivers meet at the city, the American coming down from the Sierra foothills and the Sacramento from the north, and both run between levees the region depends on. The American River Parkway is a county park thousands of acres long, with cottonwood, oak and willow galleries and a canopy the city counts. Beyond the levees the valley is rice, orchards, tomatoes and the Delta to the south; to the east the suburbs run up into oak woodland at Folsom and the Placer and El Dorado foothills, where fire season is real.

Who buys mapping here

  • City of Sacramento: Urban Forestry, Public Works, Youth, Parks and Community Enrichment, the GIS group
  • Sacramento County: Regional Parks and the American River Parkway, Water Resources, Emergency Services
  • The Sacramento Tree Foundation and the regional canopy programs
  • Sacramento Municipal Utility District and its line corridors
  • The state agencies headquartered in the city: CAL FIRE, the Natural Resources Agency, the Department of Water Resources, Caltrans, the Department of Fish and Wildlife
  • The Sacramento Area Flood Control Agency and the reclamation districts along the rivers
  • Folsom, Elk Grove, Roseville, Rancho Cordova and the other cities of the region
  • University of California, Davis and California State University, Sacramento
  • Farms and orchards in Yolo, Sacramento and Sutter counties, and the Delta's reclamation districts

Getting there

From Medford

About five and a half hours from Medford down Interstate 5, or a short flight to Sacramento International. We plan the capital in trips of several sites with Chico or the Bay Area.

The public lidar

What exists, and what it misses

The region is well flown for its levees and floodplains, by the state, the Corps and the flood agency, and that terrain data is good. A canopy inventory, an ash or elm health question, a parkway restoration baseline or a farm's drainage after a storm want this year's vegetation at crown resolution, which the levee lidar does not carry.

What we would fly

The lanes that fit Sacramento

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 Sacramento

  • 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.

  • Farm planning Start here

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

  • 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.

  • Rivers, riparian and habitat

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

  • 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

Sacramento is ahead of us. The Oregon record that applies: twelve thousand crowns classified for a city, a nursery planned on drone LiDAR terrain, and a river corridor mapped species 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
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
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

Sacramento, in trips.

A parkway reach, a canopy number for a plan, an agency pilot or a farm. Say which and Sacramento goes on the next southbound trip.

Talk to Eli

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