Category Archives: Surveying

Teaching the Ethics of Geo

Maps have always been powerful means of communication, whether etched in cave walls, stone, wood, silver of centuries past, or, in the 20th Century, copper plates and, later, film. In our own century, maps are everywhere—on our phones, computers, fitness apps, and news media, communicating in a myriad of ways about changes over space and...

From Nadir to Oblique

Spic-and-Span Bridges  Inspecting the world’s iconic bridges is becoming a UAV job  When it was time last year to inspect the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the steel arc structure that spans the harbor of Australia’s capital, authorities Down Under turned to the latest technology available: drones.   “The sky’s the limit when it comes to this technology....

Stories from the Field

We celebrate Land Surveyors United’s 16th anniversary with a couple of stories from their website. Dingoes and Tall Tales  Dingo is a small town located just across the railway line from the Capricorn Highway in a remote area of Queensland, Australia. The origin of the town’s name is shrouded in mystery. Some say a railway...

The Cahokia Mounds

The largest single-instrument geophysical survey ever in America hopes to uncover some of the mysteries of the Cahokia Mounds Long, long before any of our great Mississippi River cities, and long before Europeans landed on New World shores and pushed westward, Native Americans were thriving in an urban center so big and so complex it...

Looking Forward: Scanning History

Looking Forward On a family cruise to Mexico several years ago, I was intent on seeing the Mayan ruins at Tulum. It required a 45-minute ferry from Cozumel to Playa del Carmen and then an hour bus ride to the ruins. With the palm trees, warm Caribbean December breeze, white-sand beaches, and warm aqua water...

xyHt Magazine Heights 2023

Click on the cover to view the Heights 2023 supplement to xyHt magazine. Articles in the issue include: From Nadir to Oblique: From traditional airplanes to new-fangled gyroplanes, we take a look at several aspects of the aerial geospatial technologies that just keep getting better. The Future of Photogrammetry: While UAVs continue to emerge as aerial mapping vehicles, there...