Animals Articulate.

There are usually only a few tried and true ways of making a land survey. In my past life designing public spaces in NYC, the survey would just magically show up from an engineer or surveyor, end of story.

If you've followed the past few entries here, you know there have been some rumblings about surveying land in the mostly foreign and remote Madagascar. I have spent hours plotting 10-foot contours on Google Earth and turning them into possibly fictitious contour lines, to be determined with hand held GPS equipment upon arrival in Kianjavato in less than 3 weeks. Here is the result:






Are you ready for the coolest part? Here is a map of GPS coordinates from collars on lemurs in the wild. The coordinates include X, Y, and Z - Z being the elevation. So over time, I can lay the Z coordinates on top of the topo map and eventually have a land survey done by lemur movement. And really, who knows the land better than the lemurs. Need I say anymore, ever again, about the benefits of practicing landscape architecture on multi-disciplinary teams. Never did I think that would include legions of little furry, wide-eyed, human-like monkeys. I'm usually the monkey (bad CAD joke, I couldn't resist).