Satellite Surveyor Spots Thousands Of Points [AUDIO]

This is National Surveyor's Week, March 20th through the 26th, surveyors as in those who accurately measure the ground. To commemorate Surveyor's Week, the Bureau of Land Management teamed up with the National Society of Professional Surveyors to organize a nationwide survey of position points on Saturday using GPS.

People in Cheyenne may have noticed the 12 surveyors occupying survey markers for four hours on Saturday.

Old points, new technology:

"Surveyors across the country occupied existing survey monuments with survey-grade, mostly with survey-grade GPS to establish refined, more accurate latitude-longitude position of those monuments, so we have a better relationship of how those monuments relate to each other on the face of the Earth."

John Lee, chief cadastral surveyor for the BLM in Wyoming says the survey positions used satellites to upload data to the National Spacial Reference System.

Land survey across the country:

"We actually uploaded it to the National Geodetic Survey in Washington, D.C., and that's part of, the NGS is National Geodetic Survey which is part of the NOAA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and they will be readjusting the datum across the country in the next couple of years."

Mr. Lee said the four-hour upload with survey-grade GPS will refine the data for more accuracy, but he also added that the markers put in by old fashioned surveying are generally accurate to less than a yard.

And, says Lee, there's something else that could come out of having surveyors occupying points at the same time all across the country.

Survey with countless rod-men:

"The national professional land surveyors organization organized this across the country to try and get as many occupying points on the same time, and hopefully to set a world record and it will be published in the record books, how many we had out."