A Brief History of Surveying Equipment | Corona, CA

In order to visualize a future, we need to learn about our past. And it’s quite fascinating to see how far we’ve come when it comes to using tools in order to get things done. Since ancient civilizations in Mesopotamia, Egypt and Rome, man has used tools to measure and designate boundaries. These tools disappeared in the Middle Ages, but gained more speed during the Renaissance to survey and parcel the land around them.

In its earliest forms, one of the main tools for conducting land surveys was a chain pulled taut, and attempts were made to hold the measure level in order to improve accuracy.

Then came the introduction of the surveyor’s compass and theodolite. The surveyor’s compass, or circumferentor, consisted of a brass circle and an index; on the circle was a compass used to measure horizontal angles. A theodolite could measure both horizontal and vertical angles. Because of the greater accuracy, the theodolite was the preferred tool for surveyors throughout Europe by the early 1800s.

More recently, modern electronics have improved on the theodolite with the addition of an electronic distance measurement device, or EDM; these tools are referred to as total stations.

As GPS gains widespread use, they soon entered the arena of land surveying and many surveyors will still rely on their total stations in conjunction with other equipment such as laser scanners.

While the technology used by land surveyors has been changing and moving forward, even the most advanced technology can only do so much. Land surveying is an artform that technology can’t replace.

To find out more about the history of surveying equipment, please contact us at (800) CALVADA or visit www.calvada.com.

Calvada proudly serves Corona and all surrounding areas.

Topographic Surveys: Is It Worth Developing the Land? | Corona, CA

When buying a parcel of land to develop, it is important to know what kind of land you are buying and whether or not it is able to be developed. The solution is a topographic survey, showing the exact location of both human-made and natural features, both vertical and horizontal, in order to determine changes in elevation on a parcel of land.

Most people want to have as much information as possible before beginning a project, and topography is no exception because elevation has a considerable impact on land usability. Finding issues before it’s too late will not only save money but gives an opportunity to plan alternative options when developing the land.

A topographic survey will show the results of a 3D world on a 2D sheet of paper. The more data the surveyor collects, the more detailed the topographic survey drawing will be. However, since there aren’t any national standards regarding topographic surveys, you’ll need to consider exactly what it is that you want to know. These are the most commonly requested:

Contour levels. The focus is on the vertical changes on the property and they are shown in a series of contours on the drawing.

Vegetation location. You can specify the location of a certain size of tree trunk or a particular type of tree (carnivorous or deciduous), vegetation lines, etc.

Streams or creeks. You can specify if you want the thread (center line), the thalweg (deepest part) or just the banks to be located and shown on the drawing.

Natural occurring structures. Peaks, valleys, hills, cliffs, etc.

Manmade structures. Items such as buildings, utility lines, streets, fences and retaining walls.

To find out more about topographic surveying, please contact us at (800) CALVADA or visit www.calvada.com.

Calvada proudly serves Corona and all surrounding areas.

The Importance of Land Surveying | Corona, CA

When you purchase something, you make sure to find out exactly what you’re buying. After all, you’re spending your hard-earned money – you should know what you’re paying for. This should be the same for purchasing land. This is where a land survey comes into play. Not only do surveys help plot out the land but surveyors are used in the design and planning of said land to make room for things like roads, utilities and landscaping. It may seem to many that surveying land is a fairly new concept, but it is one of the oldest professions the world has ever known. Land surveys have dated back thousands of years to Egyptian surveyors dividing land along the Nile River and Australian surveyors trying to design their early settlements. Even famous explorers like Burke and Wills used their surveying background in their work. Yes, it may seem like a new-found industry, but we’ve needed land surveying for as long as we’ve had land to develop.

But why are they so intricate to creating our structures? Believe it or not, but it isn’t just about plotting open spaces to place buildings and other structures upon. Surveyors work with lots of other important industries like engineering, geology, architecture and planning in order to create a successful construction site. They measure the land and map it all out before anyone even steps foot on the site. These findings are given to the architects, who create a blueprint based on the needs of the client. Once complete, engineers use those plans to create a structure that will be successful based on the land available. So, as you can see, land surveys are the environmental trackers of structural design.

To find out more about land surveying, please contact us at (800) CALVADA or visit www.calvada.com.

Calvada proudly serves Corona and all surrounding areas.

How to Add Drone Surveying Equipment to Your Business with Microdrones | Corona, CA

April 26, 2022

NY-Drone surveying equipment has become more prevalent in surveying, engineering, and construction industries. Many businesses find themselves researching UAV solutions, costs, operations, and workflows in order to keep up with the competition. They need to know what is the best way to add drone surveying equipment to their business.

To help find the solution, Microdrones is hosting a special webinar: “How to Add Drone Surveying Equipment to Your Business.” This presentation will answer questions and explain how to complement traditional surveying methods by adding drone surveying equipment to your toolbox.

The main presenter for the webinar will be Matt Rosenbalm, the Northeast US sales manager. He’ll explain how the fully integrated systems from Microdrones offer powerful aerial surveying technology to enable you to work more efficiently, accurately, safely, and profitably with the combination of our unique mdInfinity software for data processing.

“I have a strong surveying and engineering background, having been in this industry for my entire career,” said Rosenbalm. “I know how this technology can fit into your workflow on a daily basis and help grow your business.”

Drone surveying equipment improves efficiencies, saving time and money, making drones an increasingly valuable tool for a variety of projects. Register for the webinar, “How to Add Drone Surveying Equipment to Your Business,” to find out how Microdrones is providing drone solutions with everything needed to do drone LiDAR and surveying the right way, with convenient and flexible pricing options.

We look forward to showing you how to get started with everything needed to use drones for complex surveying work.

Surveying on Mars | Corona, CA

June 2, 2020 | Kellee Ireland

Here on this very website, we describe surveying as, “the measurement and mapping of our surrounding environment using mathematics, specialized technology and equipment”.

But where does that leave alien environments?

The surveyors of yesteryear were explorers of a kind, discovering foreign lands and mapping them as they went. Those documents proved invaluable records of our past geographical discoveries.

As humanity reaches out to the cosmos, surveying techniques once again are called upon to mark our place in the universe. What is surveying’s role in exploring Mars?

Surveying the next frontier

Since the 1950s, humanity has made strides to get closer to Mars. There were orbiter fly-bys that collected photographs and images in the 1960s. Then in 1976, the United States’ National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) successfully sent their Viking 1 and Viking 2 orbiters to Mars, with a lander making Earth’s first touchdown on the planet’s surface. Since that day, we’ve made use of increasingly sophisticated technology in an effort to truly understand Mars.

And to understand it, first we have to map it.

Just like satellites aid modern surveyors on Earth, satellites could be used to map the surface of Mars. A particularly important step in Martian exploration was the successful launch of the Mars Global Surveyor in 1996.

The Mars Global Surveyor was designed to scan and map the entire surface of the planet from orbit. The high-resolution images it harvested showed us the highest peaks and the deepest ravines of Mars’ surface. In time, the entire planet’s surface was scanned.

The mission was to last a full decade. In this time, the Mars Global Surveyor even managed to observe the formation of new gullies, boulder tracks and craters. Meanwhile, there were ground units hitting Mars’ surface to gather additional geographic data: the Mars Exploration Rover vehicles Spirit and Opportunity spent a collective 8,000+ days roaming the planet’s surface.

One of the most recent and most exciting tools in the Mars exploration arsenal is NASA’s InSight lander.

InSight stands for Interior exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport. The lander is the first mission dedicated to looking deep beneath the surface of the planet, and it does this using technology similar to that which surveyors use here on Earth.

Researcher Katarina Miljkovic was one of several Australians who collaborted on InSight. Talking to Spatial Source, she explained, “InSight is different to previous Mars missions. It is not a rover or an orbiter. It is a geophysical station to be placed on the surface with passive instruments that will sense the interior structure. The aim is to understand how Mars has formed, how it differentiated and how much is it different to our planet.”

It’s thanks to NASA’s InSight lander mission that we now know that Mars experiences quakes just like Earth. We also now have a much better understanding of Mars’ interior structure and its evolution – and some of its magnetic anomolies. This is information that will be of great use in the future.

What if there was life on Mars?

But what of that future? What might traditional surveying look like on Mars if we were to ever step onto the planet’s surface?

Historically, Earth-bound surveying made use of the compass as a standard tool. With technological advances that is seldom still the case; all the same, it is worth noting the unusual magnetic activity on Mars that was noted above will impact how we might approach surveying and geodesy,

Mars has no global general magnetic field – though its pockets of magnetic rock and other magnetic anomalies would have to be accounted for by experts when they develop Martian surveying equipment.

Modern surveyors often make use of the Global Navigation Satellite System, and it is clear that something similar would be required when surveying on Mars.

What does the future hold?

It’s an intriguing prospect to think about how surveyors might adapt to entirely different planet’s environment. Certainly, it’s a much bigger leap than surveyors of the past who have just had to contend with new countries, or continents.

All we can know for certain is that technology will keep advancing, and that will impact what surveyors can achieve – both on this planet and the next.

To find out more about surveying on Mars, please contact us at (800) CALVADA or visit www.calvada.com.

Calvada proudly serves Corona and all surrounding areas.