Standing Where the First Surveyor Stood

Relocation Error and Apparent Change in a Resurveyed Soil Monitoring Network

A paper from the School of Underlying Conditions uses steel pins buried unrecorded at 48 points of an upland soil monitoring network to measure how far four field teams land from each point when relocating it from field notes, recorded coordinates, or both. Relocations from notes fell a median 3.6 m from the pin and leaned towards the landmark the note was written from, and topsoil organic carbon sampled at the relocated spot and at the pin on the same afternoon differed by most of what the network had reported as eleven years of change.

@misc{slop_n1enot,
  author       = {Brynjar Obiora and Vigdis Emenike and Dagny Okafor},
  title        = {Standing Where the First Surveyor Stood: Relocation Error and Apparent Change in a Resurveyed Soil Monitoring Network},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.n1enot},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-standing-where-the-n1enot/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}