Field Activity #6: Conducting a distince Azimuth Survey

Introduction

The purpose of the lab was to learn a new method of surveying known as distance azimuth. This method of data collection is a very low technological method. Much of surveying today is highly reliant on technology. the technological advances have had a positive impact but they come with a disadvantage of possibly malfunctioning while on site. If this were to happen methods, such as the distance azimuth survey method, would be beneficial to have experience with. Distance azimuth uses the concept of azimuth. Azimuth is the direction of a object in relation to a point. This is expressed in degrees. To gain experience with the method, the class was tasked with plotting the location of various tree types throughout a small area of Putnam Park located near campus(Figure 1). 

Figure 1: Location of Putnam park in relation to the University of Wisconsin- Eau Claire

Figure 2: The tools used to conduct the distance azimuth survey.
 A) garmin handheld GPs unit, B) Compass, C) laser distance finder 

Methods

Prior to beginning the survey research was done to avoid as much error as possible. The blog's of previous classes were studied. This allowed the class to learn from the mistakes. The tools to be used to conduct the survey included a  GPS unit, compass, and laser distance finder (Figure 2). Manual notes had to be taken as well so a notebook and writing utensil were necessary as well. The uses of each compass will be described in the data collection section.

      Data Collection

The first step necessary during data collection is to determine a point of origin. When dealing with azimuth, there needs to be one point that every other feature is measured from. In this case, the point was determined and marked using the handheld GPS. This will help when the data gets imported into ArcMap and will be georeferenced. The next step was to then determine the various trees in the vicinity, and get the distance and direction in degrees from the point of origin of each one. The information recorded manually on a piece of paper included; Distance,Azimuth, Tree type, and Diameter. There was a total of 30 different data points collected over the course of the lab.    

      

      Data Normalization

The 30 points were composed in an Excel file and put into the class discussion forum for everyone to use.  Here, the data was organized in a manner that would allow the information to be uploaded into ArcMap. This processes is called "normalizing" data. The final result of the excel file was a column for X, Y, Distance, Azimuthm Distance, Tree type, and Point number (Figure 3).

Results

The results form the lab was the following excel table. This table provided the information that has been used in ArcMap to show the location of various trees throughout Putnam Park.

Figure 3: The final normalized excel file with the various data point information. 

Conclusion

The surveying method used throughout the lab, distance azimuth, is a very low tech method. However, it is a very important method to learn because technology is not always reliable or accurate. the results form this lab will be used in a future lab where a map of the various tree types is created.