Recovery reporting trend

[holograph]

Maybe Holograph knows the answer to this one: of the total of all reported recoveries of NGS benchmarks in a recent year, what percentage are attributable to us?

 

Rather than hijack the Four Corners thread, I moved the answer here. A quick analysis shows that slightly less than half of the approximately 15,400 recovery reports for the 12-month period ending April 2009 were from geocachers. It's anyone's guess if the trend means anything.

 

Edited May 19, 2009 by holograph

[+Black Dog Trackers]

Two lines would've been easier to look at to compare the two.

It appears that the gas prices hit both, but the GEOCAC is more immune to that. That's surpising since they are paying for their own gas.

 

The yellow is a mixture of government agencies and engineering companies. It looks a bit like some sector of one of those quit.

[+Black Dog Trackers]

Ah, a new graph.

I still prefer lines.

Anyway, someone did quit !

[+pgrig]

Awesome data display! (I like the bar graph a lot!)

 

1. It's a relief (at least judging from their reports in MA) to see the Power Squadron reports disappearing. They must have stopped giving out "points" for these....

 

2. I'm really impressed with the role played by us geocachers! Do these reports include only those actually coded with GEOCAC at the time the NGS report is made, or are there other ways to identify geocaching inputs?

 

3. Interesting to see that the level of geocacher (a bit odd to be called that; I've never even seen a geocache) activity has remained relatively constant at say 800/mo. for the past three years.

 

4. Does this mean that NGS, state geodetic agencies, and other mark-setting entities rarely conduct station status visits anymore?

[Bill93]

When budgets are tight, the boss doesn't want the crew spending time to do recovery reports, even on the stations they use.

[+Black Dog Trackers]

I got the data and made graphs and trendlines from it. Like holograph, I narrowed it to just GEOCAC, USPSQD, and the rest. Based on a linear fit, the GEOCAC has been growing at a rate of just over 6 recoveries per month from the beginning in 2004. USPSQD quit during 2007 after a rapid decilne since 2004. The rest all together have been declining at a rate of almost 10 recoveries per month.

 

The linear fit of GEOCAC and the linear fit of all the rest crossed earlier this year, so GEOCAC is now not only the largest recovery contributor, it is larger than all the rest put together; the 'rest' being all the state DOTs, INDIV, NGS, surveying companies, and everyone else in the Contributor List.

 

I also noticed that since the beginning of 2004 the number of GEOCAC recoveries has almost reached the number of USPSQD's recoveries during the period 2004 to present.

[AZcachemeister]

My thoughts are not necessarily coherent, so bear with me...

 

Our current (apparent) front-runner status for recoveries makes me very proud!

 

However, given the current (supposed) lack of need for 'Passive Marks', are we just wasting time gallivanting across the hills? Certainly the personal satisfaction of finding a mark placed in 1872, and not seen since 1907 is highly rewarding, but does it really serve any purpose? If no surveyor has ever tried to find it, how useful is it?

 

On the other hand, there are some recent reports that the GPS system is on the brink of failure. Could it be possible that surveying will be thrown back to the days of theodolites and Bilby towers?

 

Either way, I will continue to recover and report.

[Bill93]

Az, those thoughts have a grain of truth but are too extreme.

 

Having a large number of horizontal control (tri stations, etc) is of less importance than before GPS, but some really good ones are still needed. Third order stations (which I think all intersection stations are) are particularly unimportant because it is easy to get better accuracy from GPS, hence the decision to not accept routine recoveries on intersection stations.

 

Vertical control (true bench marks) are still routinely used and are very important. There is a program underway (search GRAV-D on the NGS site) that in 10 years or more might have good enough gravity data to make very accurate conversions between GPS measured heights and orthometric elevations (the kind usually needed for engineering work). When that happens, bench marks will also be less important like horizontal ones now are.

 

The GPS system is not "on the brink of failure". That is typical pseudo-journalists yelling that the sky is falling (for how many times this month?). The replacement and upgrade program for satellites is behind schedule and about 4 satellites are on their last frequency standard. Each satellite is launched with spare standards because this unit has a relatively short and somewhat uncertain life span. If those satellites fail before replacements are operational, then coverage will be reduced enough to make surveyors more picky about their observation times. It seems unlikely that highway navigation will be seriously hampered unless launches are delayed several years.

 

And any pride I might feel about being part of GEOCAC is quickly reduced when I remember the fiasco where a noob told NGS to move their disk to where his handheld said it should be. A lot of professional surveyors (those who haven't seen the range of knowledge and skill high and low lumped into that category) were very indignant about geocachers after that episode.

Edited May 21, 2009 by Bill93

[+Black Dog Trackers]

.... I remember the fiasco where a noob told NGS to move their disk to where his handheld said it should be. A lot of professional surveyors (those who haven't seen the range of knowledge and skill high and low lumped into that category) were very indignant about geocachers after that episode.

I can't help but be curious about this. I'm wondering if there was a way in which such a thing could have been prevented. Was the "noob told NGS" communication an email to NGS, or was it in a recovery report? After that, how did a lot of professional surveyors hear of this communication?

[2oldfarts (the rockhounders)]

BDT, I did a search and found the Thread by Callaway.

 

LINK.

 

Shirley~

[+welch]

Is it possiable to graph the different groups trends over a longer period? say 50 or even 100 years?

 

Of the (very limited) number of benchmark pages I've looked it at it seemd many were sought out in the early 1930s, mid 1960s, and then again around 1995. Perhaps the decline is part an repeating cycle

[+Black Dog Trackers]

Hi Shirley,

 

Thank you for posting that link. When I looked, I recalled reading it at the time, but I forgot about it.

 

Considering the hundreds of good reports to the NGS under the GEOCAC flag, I just can't see this one as a highly signficant and representative log.

 

welch-

 

Yes it certainly is possible. Graphs do get quite busy looking with all those agencies though. Also most in the list are relatively new. Alternatively, just a graph without separating by agency could be made, just to see when recovery reports were being done. It can't be done by month earlier than around 1999 or something. Before that time, only the year was noted.

[Bill93]

The problematic report was a submission that got on the NGS data sheet.

-------

Welch, those date periods you quote are when large numbers of marks were set and measured in this area.

 

The prior discussion was on reports submitted regarding the condition of those marks in the last decade or less.

[+Black Dog Trackers]

welch -

 

OK, here's a graph of recoveries by agency.

There are some before 1900 but very few.

I combined CGS and NGS.

 

 

Here's the total recoveries of the top 20 contributors (CGS and NGS are not combined here).

369926 NGS

237051 USPSQD

148020 CGS

59763 USGS

39026 GEOCAC

24610 NCGS

24472 MNDT

17174 SCGS

11186 INDIV

8911 LOCENG

8680 WIDT

8140 MSHD

8018 LOCSUR

7733 FLDT

7267

6710 FLDEP

5927 FLDNR

5436 NOS

4938 USACE

4812 CADT

 

(There were 7267 with no contributor agency.)