American Surveyor Vol 8 No 2 Articles Posted

Editorial: The Things We Gather
You can tell a lot about people by the things they collect. Whatever the motivation, for most of us the process of collecting is a pleasurable pursuit. Many of our writers own fine collections--old surveying instruments, classic cars, antique clocks, coins, photographs and more. Personally, I've ....
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An Integrated Solution for Mining The Twangiza-Namoya gold belt in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is potentially one of the most exciting undeveloped gold deposits in the world today. Exploration and mining activities across what are today Banro's four ... Read the Article

What Separates the Rich from the Poor? "The rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted." —James Madison. Of the 6 billion people on Earth, 2 billion try to survive on a few dollars a day. They don't businesses, or... Read the Article

Montana's GIS-Based Cadastre Layered with Riches As the fourth largest state in the United States, Montana is synonymous with frontier. Under the state's famous "big sky" are 145,552 square miles of sparsely populated open land, and-- ranked forty-fourth in total population and forty-eighth in ... Read the Article

Harnessing a GPS Network It's a powerful system, this SmartNet North America. Launched by Leica on March 1, 2010, SmartNet is a subscription-based service offering GNSS Network RTK corrections throughout North America. Geographically, SmartNet covers Ontario, Quebec ... Read the Article

Using Google Earth I'm sure many surveyors like myself have downloaded and played with Google Earth. I have virtual map pins stuck in places where I've lived and worked, and pins placed at Air Force bases where I was stationed in the United States, Europe and North Africa. There are pins in the ... Read the Article

Vantage Point: Life Behind Levees: an Overview and Update Throughout history, mankind's interaction with water has been a love/hate relationship. We have loved to be near water for drinking, bathing, fishing, watering crops, navigating our ships, and just plain aesthetics. On the other hand we have hated the unpredictability of water rising up out of .... Read the Article

Footsteps: Title Industry Changes Affect Surveying
Several changes have recently occurred in the land title industry. What caused these changes and what impact they have had on the boundary surveyor are the topics that this article will address. The land title industry is the group of companies that offer insurance to the purchaser of ...
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American Surveyor Vol 8 No 1 Articles Posted

Editorial: Good Records
Old photos and family albums tell stories that few of us ever take the time to put into words. My wife's family was fortunate to have several ancestors who were good writers. They left behind stories, rich in detail, describing their lives in the late 1800s and early 1900s, the struggles they faced ....
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Rainier—The Unforgiving Mountain Why has the Land Surveyors Association of Washington (LSAW) mounted repeated expedi tions to measure and remeasure Mount Rainier? Along with some very practical reasons--serving geosciences, geodesy, gravimetry, and public safety--this .... Read the Article

Using the Lynx Mobile Mapper to Survey a Levee In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast of the United States, leaving in its wake an unprecedented loss of life and property damage. Among the critical infrastructure the storm impacted was the levee system that controls the .... Read the Article

GIS Matters: Convert CAD Data to GIS Surveyors have been using Computer Aided Drafting/Design (CAD) for decades to draft surveys and to do design. As society becomes more spatially conscious, the ability to integrate data with geographic information systems data increases and is now to the point where CAD-GIS ... Read the Article

Product Review: MicroSurvey CAD 2010 Ultimate "Good!" Step. Step. Step. Plumb the pole. Beep . . . beep . . . beep. "Good!" So goes the familiar rhythm of any one of a thousand topographic surveys on any given day. Each month, surveying magazines are filled with images of point clouds from laser scans. And each month the average practicing ... Read the Article

Conference Review: Moving Forward—2010 Leica Geosystems HDS Worldwide User Conference This year's Leica HDS User Conference once again raised the bar for return on investment in terrestrial 3D laser scanning conferences. With attendance approaching 300, up some ... Read the Article

Model Behavior: The How-To Guide to Successful Surface Modeling, Part 5 Welcome back! In my last article I stated that the next installment of this discussion would examine some field techniques to help create more accurate base models, but I will cover that topic at a later time .... Read the Article

Vantage Point: The Latest "Gate"
My township taxes will probably be going up, and maybe you can gain a business lesson from my pain. Call it "Webcam-gate". Many businesses have formal policies regarding personal activities on business time. This includes phone calls to friends, family, doctors' offices, and the bank. It also ...
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