Reading Topography
As I discussed in my last blog, reading topography can be a bit of an art. Those who deal with it regularly gain the capability to see the contours literally come into focus as a three dimensional pattern. For example, I can look at a topographic map and tell whether the contours are forming the […]
Relief from Topography
My father, ‘Sut’ Settlemeyer was a surveyor for the United States Geological Survey (USGS). He referred to the maps they produced as quad, or relief maps. The universal geologic language of relief mapping is contour topography. Now what exactly is a contour? Simply, nothing more than a step. Just as a flight of stairs is […]