Rogue Reconnaissance
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Brookings, Oregon

The south coast, where the campus job proved the terrain work.

In Brookings we flew drone LiDAR over a 37 acre school campus and delivered contours, plan sheets and CAD ready terrain with the control residuals on the sheet. Curry County is the far corner of the state from most mapping firms and two and a half hours from our office.

Talk to Eli All of Oregon

The ground

Brookings and Curry County

Brookings and Harbor sit on either side of the Chetco where it reaches the Pacific, with the Easter lily fields on the flats south toward the state line and redwoods in Alfred A. Loeb State Park a few miles up the river. Behind the town the Kalmiopsis and the Rogue River Siskiyou National Forest rise steeply, the ground the 2017 Chetco Bar fire came down toward the city. North along 101 are Gold Beach, the lower Rogue and Port Orford.

Who buys mapping here

  • City of Brookings: Public Works, Planning, Parks; the Port of Brookings Harbor
  • Curry County: Public Works, Emergency Management, Planning; Gold Beach and Port Orford
  • Brookings Harbor School District, Southwestern Oregon Community College's Curry campus, and the other districts on the coast
  • Coos Curry Electric Cooperative and the lines through the forest
  • Brookings Fire and Rescue, Cape Ferrelo and the rural districts, and the Coos Forest Protective Association
  • The Rogue River Siskiyou National Forest's Gold Beach district and the BLM Coos Bay District
  • Lower Rogue and South Coast watershed councils, the Curry Soil and Water Conservation District
  • The lily growers, cranberry bogs to the north, timber owners, and the engineers and surveyors who build on the bluffs

Getting there

From Medford

About two and a half hours from Medford through the Illinois Valley on Highway 199 and up 101. A day trip for a site; a couple of nights for a corridor or a watershed.

The public lidar

What exists, and what it misses

The coast has public lidar from the state and federal programs, flown for the shoreline, the bluffs and the river mouths, with older or thinner coverage in the forest behind. A building site on a slope, a campus, a bluff that is moving or a timber unit after a fire needs its own flight at its own date, which is the work we first drove down for in 2023.

What we would fly

The lanes that fit Brookings

Orthomosaic of a creek corridor through Phoenix, Oregon, clipped to the project area.
Property
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
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
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 Brookings

  • Property and site design Start here

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

  • Forestry Start here

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

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Wildfire fuels and CWPP support

    Canopy height, ladder fuels and structure exposure for a Community Wildfire Protection Plan, citywide when the plan needs it.

  • 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

The Brookings campus itself, a river corridor classified by species, and a Douglas County fire flown eighteen nights running.

Contour plan view over a high school track and field, one foot contours from drone LiDAR.

Property 2023

A school site, ready for the engineers

Pacific 3D Reality Capture, for the Brookings Harbor High School campus

Drone LiDAR terrain and contours over a 37 acre school campus, delivered as plan sheets and CAD ready data for the design team.

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
Division L infrared map for the Tyee Ridge Complex on a topographic base, August 31, 2023.

Wildland Fire 2023

Tyee Ridge Complex

Oregon Department of Forestry

Nightly infrared mapping by division on a complex fire, including a spot fire caught outside the line.

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

Brookings and the south coast, in a day.

A site for the engineers, a bluff, a reach of the Chetco or a unit in the hills. Send the ground and we will put the aircraft on the coast road.

Talk to Eli

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