Back when we used paper maps on digs in Arizona

I remember my first field school out near Flagstaff in 2010, we had to plot everything by hand on those giant topo sheets. Now I see students pulling up GIS data on their phones and it blows my mind how fast things moved. Do any of the old school methods actually still hold up better for certain sites?

2 comments

2 Comments

miles_perez8d ago

Man, totally feel you on that. I was out near the Four Corners in 2012 and we still did everything with those graph paper grids and pencil sketches, even had to pace off distances because the GPS kept dropping. Honestly, for small backcountry sites with bad signal, that old manual stuff is still way more reliable than any app.

olivia_morgan88d ago

Older methods might be better for some sites but I was reading a paper last month about how hand drawn maps actually capture things that GPS misses sometimes because you notice more details when you're physically sketching it out. Something about how the brain processes spatial information differently when you're drawing versus tapping a screen. Plus you don't have to worry about batteries dying or signal cutting out. I still keep a gridded notebook and a compass in my pack just in case, especially for those real remote spots where your phone is basically a brick.