Category Archives: Surveying
Surveyor’s Corner: Women in Surveying
The future for women in surveying is getting brighter all the time History tells us the journey for female surveyors began with Alice Fletcher in the late 1800s. Fletcher was a social scientist who tried to integrate Native Americans into the European culture spreading across America. After learning that Native Americans feared being banished to...
The Fangs and the Damage Done
By Cooper Ferko Introduction: Surveyors encounter dangerous situations in the field, and this includes wildlife. We’ve all had our snake encounters, venomous and non. There was a time when I was cavalier about it, flicking a snake away with a range pole. But that all changed around a campfire, at my cousin’s family camp near...
Surveyors and Appellate Court Opinions
Why should we care about appellate court opinions? I have had this question posed to me on numerous occasions. I suppose it has its roots in the old surveyor’s saw: “We don’t need to read court decisions, because you can never know what the judge is going to do.” While this may have a grain...
No Barrier Between Land and Water
Innovative tools and technology help hydrographic mapping deliver detailed data in previously inaccessible areas. Underwater mapping presents unique logistical challenges that are increasingly being met with technology used in creative ways, and by combining multiple types of data to develop a complete picture. From unmanned surface vessels (USV) to multi-beam sonar, advanced equipment yields accurate...
What to do With All the Lidar Data
An age-old Aesop’s Fable adage says, “Be careful what you wish for, lest it come true!” When the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) embarked on the National Enhanced Elevation Assessment (NEAA) in 2012, the goal was to document the national-level requirements for enhanced elevation data. Little did USGS know at the time, the report would be...
A Story About an Orchard
It’s a normal progression in the career of a surveyor to move into personnel management, as one becomes more experienced and gets promoted to a management position, or as they operate their own private practice. One of the first and most obvious problems is that not all good surveyors are good at managing people. Give...
