Category Archives: Surveying

xyHt Team!

November Editorial: Cue Team Building

For five days last week, I was dreading coming to work on Friday. It was the day most of my staff was excited about, but definitely not me. Let me backtrack. We at xyHt provide you, our readers, with lots of solid information about new technologies, skills, and ideas on operating your geospatial businesses. What...

Mars Night Shift

Mars Colonization: Mars Need Surveyors, Part Two

This is Part 2 of our Mars Needs Surveyors series from the Pangaea newsletter.  Part 1 is here.  As the dream of Mars colonization comes to fruition, what would surveyors be tasked with? Habitat construction SpaceX’s Elon Musk’s vision is to build a city on Mars (appropriately named SpaceX City) that would eventually be inhabited...

Leveraging the Land Surveyor’s Roles: Testimony

Providing Testimony Editor’s note: This past May, Ambrose Gmeiner completed his Professional Science Masters Degree from the University of Maine. His final paper, “The Land Surveyor as a Project Lead and Providing Professional Testimony,” is the source for this series of articles on increasing the skills, strengths, and credentials of the professional land surveyor. There...

Leveraging the Land Surveying Role, Part 3

The economics of land surveying Editor’s note: This past May, Ambrose Gmeiner completed his Professional Science Masters Degree from the University of Maine. His final paper, The Land Surveyor as a Project Lead and Providing Professional Testimony, is the source for this series of articles on increasing the skills, strengths, and credentials of the professional...

Surveyors Wanted

Mars Colonization: Mars Needs Surveyors!

Elon Musk’s plan to make us a space-faring and multi-planetary species will provide another planet to survey. Late last month, SpaceX’s founder Elon Musk unveiled his plan to start Mars colonization by 2025. Musk believes passionately that for humankind to survive in the long run, we must become a space-faring and multi-planetary species. Sooner or later,...

Meades Ranch monument

Coordinates: The Rodney Dangerfield of Boundary Surveying

Although my entire surveying career has been in California, I believe that the following is true in almost every, if not every, state. With regards to the Priority of Evidence Rules (Rule of Construction), when conflicting elements exist when determining boundary location, coordinates are always at the bottom of the list. In my 30 years...