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GNSS Receivers Aid Winter Survey of Cumberland Trail
GNSS receivers and an integrated surveying system played key roles in a boundary survey that added a lengthy section to Tennessee’s nearly finished Cumberland Trail. Working in harsh winter conditions—during the 11 weeks of the survey, average daytime temperatures were below freezing, and surveyors endured more than 60 inches of snow and rain—the RLS Group, based in Chattanooga, Tenn., surveyed 19 miles of trail corridor using Leica Geosystems’ Viva System. The project was done in winter to take advantage of reduced foliage and snake hibernation. Because the descriptions of underlying parcels called to ridgelines and other natural features, surveyors knew they would be working in areas with minimal sight lines. “With all the one-to-one slopes out here, and the snow cover and the brush, traversing with total stations would have been ridiculous,” noted Shane Loyd, RLS president. Because part of the job was to create and mark the corridor “on the fly,” crews used the Viva controllers and cellular links to upload data to an FTP site at the end of workdays. RLS office technicians downloaded the data, calculated alignments, and then uploaded alignments to direct the next day’s staking. “We could have done the calcs in the field, but that would really have cut into the time available for survey work and camping chores,” added Loyd.
Natural Gas Potential Mapped in Eastern Mediterranean
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) estimated that 122 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of undiscovered, technically recoverable natural gas are in the Levant Basin Province in the Eastern Mediterranean region. Technically recoverable resources are those producible using currently available technology and industry practices. The Levant Basin Province also holds an estimated 1.7 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil. Worldwide consumption of petroleum was about 31 billion barrels in 2008. This is the first USGS assessment of this basin to identify potentially extractable resources. “The Levant Basin Province is comparable to some of the other large provinces around the world, and its gas resources are bigger than anything we have assessed in the United States,” said Brenda Pierce, program coordinator, USGS Energy Resources. “This assessment furthers our understanding of the world’s energy potential, helping inform policy and decision makers in making decisions about future energy supplies.” Worldwide consumption and production of natural gas was 110 tcf in 2008, according to the Energy Information Administration. The three largest consuming countries were the United States with 23 tcf, Russia with 17 tcf and Iran with 4 tcf of natural gas per year in 2008. Some natural gas accumulations in the United States include the Southwestern Wyoming Province, with an estimated 85 tcf; the National Petroleum Reserve Alaska Province with 73 tcf; and the Appalachian Basin Province of the eastern United States, and the Western Gulf Basin Province of Texas and Louisiana, each with 70 tcf. “We use GIS in our everyday operation to map oil and gas data,” noted Chris Schenk, a geologist with
GNSS receivers helped map a stretch of the Cumberland Trail, which will eventually total more than 300 miles of wilderness trail, stretching from Cumberland Gap National Park to Chattanooga.
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