Category Archives: Surveying
Shake, Rattle & Roll: Disruptions to the Geodetic Fabric
On July 4, 2019 the desert region near Ridegcrest, California was hit with a magnitude 6.4 earthquake, resulting in minor damage in the area, most significantly to the infrastructure at the Naval Air Weapons Station at China Lake. Approximately 44 hours later on July 6th, a larger earthquake of magnitude 7.1 struck the region, causing...
2019 National Trig-Star Competition and Trig-Star Scholarship Recipients
Sponsored by the National Society of Professional Surveyors, Trig-Star is a competition that recognizes and rewards high school students who excel in mathematics, particularly Trigonometry, and their teachers. The goal of the program is to demonstrate practical uses for mathematics and bring greater awareness of the surveying profession. The Trig-Star Scholarship program (https://trig-star.com/scholarships) offers the opportunity for...
New Video Promoting Surveying as a Career
US Careers Online has partnered with WithersRavenel to highlight Geomatics and Surveying as a possible career path. North Carolina based US Careers Online—a leader in helping students find a career in new and interesting fields for over a decade—has released its newest video profile highlighting the field of Geomatics and Surveying. The video is collaboration...
Search for the Missing Pier
Above: The Gaithersburg Latitude Observatory is now a community park. My tale of locating the latitude pier of the Cincinnati Latitude Observatory, one of six international latitude observatories now defunct but historically significant. It was 1974, and I’d been working at the National Geodetic Survey (NGS) for two years. One afternoon my boss told me...
Construction Staking
Are you doing it right? In today’s world, survey construction staking is a major service being provided by most companies within the land surveying and civil engineering industry. Throughout my career, like many of you, I have been employed by a handful of different land surveying and civil engineering firms, and with each firm came...
The “Ah Ha” Moments, Part 2
Last month I wrote of two “Ah Ha” moments early in my career: situations where the “light came on” from a surveying experience, even if the value of the moment wasn’t fully understood at the time. In this issue, I share a couple more: where a practical application cemented abstract concepts and where a lack...