I think I can figure out once they have a reference point, how they could super accurately measure everything from there. But often times property disputes seem to come down to a matter of inches.
How does a surveyor know *this* spot is for sure correct and I can base the rest of the measurements on it? It seems like tiny errors over many plots of land could add up to being off by several feet.
In: Engineering
Everything you said is true, and surveyors have to consider it. There are survey markers (monuments) scattered around that serve as reference points. When a surveyor starts a new survey, they’ll place a GPS receiver on it for several hours to get as good a fix as possible before basing the rest of the survey from that point. They’re not *that* ubiquitous though, so you kinda have to daisy-chain points that aren’t in line-of-sight to the monument. That does accumulate error, and there are limits to what is acceptable.
My dad’s a land surveyor practicing in the state of Georgia. It’s been a while since I worked with him. Somebody with a license or more recent experience can probably give a better answer.
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