Houston, TX & the I-10 corridor
Developers, builders and engineers on the Houston side need terrain data for tracts that nobody can see into: pine regrowth, yaupon and tallow thick enough that a ground crew has to cut lines for days before a single shot is taken. We fly drone LiDAR over those tracts east of Houston, along the Interstate 10 corridor through Chambers and Liberty counties and on into the Golden Triangle, and the deliverable is control-checked terrain data your licensed Texas surveyor can review and seal.
Drone Topographic Mapping
A topographic survey on wooded Gulf Coast ground usually starts the slow way. A crew cuts sight lines through the brush, walks the tract with a rover, and shoots points where it can get to them. On a few hundred acres of thicket that takes days, and the gaps are wherever the brush won.
Aerial LiDAR takes the brush out of the equation. The scanner fires hundreds of thousands of laser pulses a second, and the pulses that slip through gaps in the canopy come back off the dirt. Classified and filtered, those ground returns become a bare-earth terrain model of the whole tract, not just the parts a crew could reach: ditches, old channels, low spots, berms, and the drainage paths that decide where a pad, a road or a detention pond can go.
How It Works
It starts with what the survey is for: a feasibility look, drainage design, a pad and road layout, or volumes for fill. That sets the accuracy, the flight height and how much ground control is needed.
Ground control points and checkpoints are set and measured with survey-grade GPS so the LiDAR ties to real coordinates and can be checked independently. We fly the tract, then classify the point cloud into ground and non-ground, and build the bare-earth surface, contours and breaklines. Your licensed surveyor reviews the control, the checkpoints and the surface, adds anything that has to be measured on foot, and prepares and seals the survey.
You receive the surface, contours and control report in formats your surveyor's and engineer's CAD and design software can use, ready for the seal.
The Equipment
Terrain under canopy is flown with a DJI Matrice 400 carrying a Zenmuse L3 LiDAR scanner, which records up to 16 returns per laser pulse. More returns per pulse is what gets ground points down through dense understory instead of mapping the top of the brush. A 100 MP mapping camera flies in the same pass, and a DJI D-RTK 3 base station ties the data to real coordinates.
Aircraft
Flown for: Canopy mapping, thermal and storm flights on private and development land
Aerial LiDAR scanner
Flown for: Terrain under dense brush: bare earth, contours, drainage and volumes
Base station and GNSS rover
Flown for: Ties every DJI flight to real, checkable coordinates
Specifications are the manufacturer's published figures under the manufacturer's test conditions, from enterprise.dji.com, store.freeflysystems.com and gremsy.com, checked September 2026. Flight times carry their conditions on purpose: the Astro Max's 43 minutes is the bare aircraft, and a heavy sensor cuts it to 20. The Astro Max LiDAR payload is not listed because it is not settled; its figures go up when it is. Accuracy on a real job depends on canopy, ground control, weather and flight plan, and what we deliver is mapping data, not a survey. DJI, Matrice and Zenmuse are trademarks of SZ DJI Technology Co., Ltd.; Freefly and Astro are trademarks of Freefly Systems; Gremsy and VIO are trademarks of Gremsy. TRP Land Clearing & Excavation is not affiliated with or endorsed by any of them.
Why TRP
From thicket to subdivision
LiDAR is not a separate service bolted onto land clearing. It is how a wooded tract becomes a property you can sell lots on: the scan feeds the design, the design drives the clearing, and you see the finished layout before the first tree comes down.
What most raw land here looks like: pine regrowth, yaupon and tallow so thick nobody can see the ground, let alone where the water goes.
One flight takes the trees off. The bare-earth model shows the ridge, every drainage channel and the low ground, with no sight lines cut.
Contours go to the surveyor and engineer. Roads and lots go on the high ground, drainage follows the channels, detention sits at the natural low.
The proposed layout drawn over your own aerial. Owners, buyers and lenders see the finished property before a machine moves.
We clear, mulch and grade exactly what the plan calls for. The greenbelt stays standing, and nothing gets cleared twice.
A second flight checks grades and measures what was moved against the design, so the before and after come from one crew.
Real ground, illustrative plan: a wooded tract near Lumberton, Hardin County, from USGS 3DEP LiDAR and NAIP aerial imagery (public domain), rendered by TRP. The subdivision layout is drawn to show the method. It is not a real plan and not a TRP project. Surveys and engineering are prepared and sealed by licensed professionals.
How LiDAR works
A LiDAR scanner on the drone fires hundreds of thousands of laser pulses a second. Each pulse can bounce back several times: off the top of a tree, off branches, and, through the gaps, off the ground. The scanner records every return with its exact position.
Back in the office, the returns are classified. Everything that came off trees, brush and buildings is set aside, and the ground returns become a bare-earth surface of the whole tract. From that surface come the contours, spot elevations, drainage lines and volumes an engineer designs from, and the licensed surveyor checks it against measured control before sealing the survey.
The example here is real public LiDAR data from Hardin County, north of Beaumont. It is not our flight, but it is the same kind of ground, and it shows exactly what a thicket hides.
Real Southeast Texas example, about 2 km across, near Lumberton in Hardin County. The photo shows nothing but trees. The LiDAR of the same ground shows what is under them: every branching drainage channel, the old ponds and the road beds. Blue-green is low ground, tan is high.
USGS National Map: 3DEP LiDAR elevation and NAIP aerial imagery (public domain). Rendering by TRP. Not a TRP project.
The same ground as contours: a line every half meter of elevation, a heavier line every two and a half. This is the kind of surface a surveyor and an engineer design drainage, pads and roads from.
USGS National Map: 3DEP LiDAR elevation and NAIP aerial imagery (public domain). Rendering by TRP. Not a TRP project.
Call 409-554-2287 or fill out our form for a no-obligation quote.
Bare-earth terrain under the brush, thermal and storm damage flights, data for your surveyor or engineer
Thermal and zoom inspection of refineries, terminals, substations and power lines, flown on NDAA-compliant Blue UAS hardware
Post-storm aerial photos, thermal and LiDAR of roofs, tree fall, flooding and access, for owners, adjusters and contractors
Clear acreage for building, pasture, or resale
Karl Gillihan, Owner
TRP Land Clearing & Excavation
Updated September 2026
Get a free, no-obligation estimate for your project.