Geodetic Monument Design: Geodesy's Feet of Clay

Introduction

This page provides links to various documents describing designs for geodetic monuments: we call this geodesy's feet of clay both because it is often the limiting factor in precise geodetic measurements and because it definitely involves interacting with the dirt. This is a problem in which there is no single "best" answer: different designs work better in different conditions, and there is a very definite tradeoff between cost and quality.

Some Links to Designs

• Our own designs for drilled-braced monuments, including a deep system, a shallower version, and two types of post mounts.

• A Shallow Drilled Braced monument has been developed for use in SCIGN, for locations inaccessible by the drill rig used for the deep design.

• The United States National Geodetic survey has recently proposed for CORS (permanent GPS) sites; the report and instructions for building such a monument are available here (scroll down to find "Monumentation"). UNAVCO have used a modified version of this design for several installations. We reviewed this design and have some rather critical views of it.

• Some designs for bedrock monuments developed by the Western Canada Geodetic Array

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