San Diego, California
Canyons through the city, backcountry that burned twice, a utility that changed.
San Diego learned fire from the Cedar and Witch fires and built the most watched utility wildfire program in the country out of it. The city is laced with canyons that carry fire into neighbourhoods, the county's backcountry is chaparral to the mountains, and the groves of the north county are a farm question of their own. Fuels, canopy and farm planning are the flights.
The ground
San Diego and San Diego County
The city spreads over mesas cut by canyons, Mission Trails and the San Diego River through the middle, Balboa Park's planted forest near downtown, the bay and the ports to the west. North the county is avocado and citrus groves around Fallbrook and Escondido and the Marine base at Camp Pendleton; east it climbs through chaparral and oak to the Cleveland National Forest and the Cuyamaca and Laguna mountains, the country the 2003 Cedar fire and the 2007 Witch fire burned on Santa Ana winds. The Tijuana River valley closes the county at the border.
Who buys mapping here
- City of San Diego: Parks and Recreation and the urban forestry program, the Fire Rescue Department's brush management program, Public Utilities, the Planning Department's canopy work
- San Diego County: the Fire Protection District, Parks and Recreation, Planning and Development Services, the Office of Emergency Services
- San Diego Gas and Electric and its wildfire mitigation program
- The San Diego Association of Governments, which holds the regional GIS; the San Diego County Water Authority
- The Cleveland National Forest, CAL FIRE's San Diego Unit, and the county's fire safe councils
- Camp Pendleton's environmental and fire programs; the Port of San Diego
- The San Diego River Park Foundation, the Mission Trails Regional Park Foundation, the Escondido Creek Conservancy
- Avocado and citrus growers of the north county; San Diego State University and the University of California, San Diego
Getting there
From Medford
A flight into San Diego with the aircraft in its cases; twelve hours from Medford by road. San Diego is the southern end of the two week southern California trip.
The public lidar
What exists, and what it misses
San Diego County and the regional government have flown lidar countywide, and the utility flies its own corridors every year, so the terrain and the lines are well described. The canyons inside the city, the groves, the backcountry parcels and the city's canopy target want a current record at the crown and the structure, flown when the question is asked.
What we would fly
The lanes that fit San Diego
Nearest work
San Diego County is beyond where we have flown. The record that applies: Ashland measured structure by structure for its plan, Eugene counted crown by crown, and a nursery planned on drone LiDAR terrain.
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
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
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 caseThe record
Every project we have published
Forestry and trees
- Downed woody debris, measured from the air
- Finding every Oregon ash before the borer does
- At risk, declining, dieback, dead
- Post harvest monitoring for ODF
- A planting corridor through Phoenix, tree by tree
Rivers and habitat
- Riparian species and cold seeps on the Scott River
- Ten abandoned mines, bare earth under the chaparral
Wildfire fuels and planning
Night infrared on fires
- Night infrared on ODF incidents since 2019
- East Evans Creek, a season inside one fire
- Fielder Mountain, eleven nights as the heat went out
- Woodrat Mountain, from initial attack to the last check
- Interstate 5 at milepost 57, initial attack beside the freeway
- Tyee Ridge Complex
Terrain and site design
Farm planning
San Diego, the southern end of the trip.
A canyon system, a backcountry planning area, a grove or a canopy count. Tell us which program is asking and San Diego anchors the south.
Email info@roguerecon.net or call 808 298 6290.