The American Surveyor June articles

Editorial: Carlson Software: It's All About Providing Choice There are lots of reasons why I love my job, but one in particular is the macro view it provides of our industry as technology develops, and seeing it at trade shows and various user conferences. The down side, however, is that spending so much time on exhibit floors prevents me from...Read the Article

Point to Point: Our Niche of the Law In a trial with which I was recently involved, the judge interrupted one of the attorneys in his closing arguments by saying, "Wait a minute. Are you telling me that if someone uses my property without my permission for a length of time, I can lose that property?" It's fair to say that...Read the Article

The Receding Railroads By the mid 1920s the railroads in the United States had reached their peak with over 272,000 miles of trackage, not including double tracks, side tracks, or spur lines. The decline of the railroads began almost simultaneously with the advent and momentum gained by the ...Read the Article

Wow Factor: TDS Nomad Mobile communications are advancing all the time. What you want to know is, "How can they work for me?" Now there are mobile phones (well, actually mobile modems) capable of nearly broadband speed levels. Some of these modems come in the form of a USB device that can be...Read the Article

Conference Review: SPAR 2008 One of the overarching themes of SPAR 2008­and, indeed, of laser scanning in general­is that the existence of a carefully constructed virtual world will enhance our use and enjoyment of the actual world. Accurate 3D models facilitate...Read the Article

Flood Modeling with FEMA's HAZUS-MH MR3 Software Created by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), HAZUS is a nationally applicable methodology for estimating potential damage, economic loss, and social impacts from disasters. In September 2007 FEMA released...Read the Article

Fresh Boundaries Bring Hope to Bugala Setting out for a ten-day field project, the minivan carrying twelve of us with our luggage and surveying equipment bumped along for two hours on narrow, dusty, rutted out roads. We were headed for the village of Bugala in the Nakaseke District of Uganda, located approximately...Read the Article

From Service Station to Reference Station Facing a steadily-growing workload of elevation certificates for Alabama homeowners looking to rebuild after the ravages of Hurricane Katrina, officials at Polysurveying of Mobile decided that setting up the company's own Continually Operating Reference Station (CORS) could...Read the Article

Equipment Review: ProMark3 RTK from Magellan Professional The ProMark3 RTK is Magellan's latest precision, entry-level system, offering real-time kinematic power in a system that is substantially less expensive than dual-frequency RTK packages. The ProMark3 is a rugged Windows CE device (Fig. 1). Other than the operating system itself...Read the Article

Field Notes: Oh, What Crooked Footsteps We Follow According to the National Society of Professional Surveyors (NSPS), boundary surveyors "...compare and analyze all of the data gathered and reach a professional opinion as to the most probable location of the...Read the Article

Survey Reports: Preparing a Survey Report - Part 3 This is the third article in a series of articles suggesting formats and contents of a survey report. In the first article [Feb. 2008], I discussed reporting an opinion on the location of corners and boundaries. In the second article [Mar. 2008], I discussed how surveyors could...Read the Article

Vantage Point: Land Ethics
Boulder, Colorado—­home to Celestial Seasonings, the University of Colorado, the National Hazards Center, millionaires—­and possibly also land grabbers? I recently shared dinner with a colleague from Colorado, who alerted me to a case of modern day possible ethical lapses and...Read the Article