“population inhomogeneity” statistics definition

Up pops this very thread at the top of Google’s output list.
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So either a lot of people are reading this thread on the Internet, or perhaps this thread is considered the best real-world example of population inhomogeneity now available in Cyberspace.

Can’t match that, Geoff – too much

The silliest I’ve seen was an entire drilling program on someone else’s lease due to a surveyor disliking working in a hot climate (preferred the air conditioned vehicle). The recipient of this unexpected bounty of information was quite grateful, really

Thank you for this info. In this distant part of the world I guess not many know of the lake burst and we are the wiser for your account. Historical accounts like yours help keep the blog interesting and often contain lessons – e.g. be careful of alternative solutions to problems posed by Nature unless you are good at it.

Re: ianl8888 (#33),

Did you see a spreading chasm in NE Africa nicknamed “Al Gorge” on WUWT a few days ago? Shows the problems in coordinate mapping a changing feature on the ground as compared with making a global grid reference system.

We once flew an aircaft briefly over the border from Iran to Afghanistan because of a mapping error. It excited the launch of a MiG fighter.

I meant to add that it obviously works least best nearer the poles. I’ve tried it in both far northern Siberia and western Antartica – the disconnect between adjacent UTM zones due to curvature is just too much

However, the frustration of people trying to locate the dendro sample sites on Google is clear

Thanks Geoff

I’ve had an enormous amount of quite frustrating experience trying to collate survey for mapping across about half the world. I agree that compensating for the earth’s curvature is a constant issue. However, UTM gridding has proved the most useful, albeit that the surveyors constantly change the origin

There is no absolute answer, of course, just more or less useful ones. UTM has worked for me much better than other choices but it ain’t perfect.

There is a 1996 Australian paper that goes into fair depth about why UTM was not used from the start. Countries sometimes chose their own datum points and with later GPS they all had to be tied in together.

http://www.land.vic.gov.au/Land/lcnlc2.nsf/9e58661e880ba9e44a256c640023eb2e/f3068d9f47c3165cca25713a0002ea2e/$FILE/tech_doc.pdf

It’s not the only useful paper but it should do the job. There can be no single, static projection that satisfies all needs for all time. The earth is plastic and the divergence of some tectonic plates is 100mm a year.

Other posts on CA have shown how, particularly with satellites, small projection/geodesy errors can have significant effects in climate science.

In our exploration work, mineral leases that had been pegged along magnetic N-S fencelines in the 1870s were now quite away from the fenceline. “Only the stars never change”.

It’s probably another discipline like statistics where climate scientists should have their work vetted by experts pre-publication. I do not know how many climate scientists would peg out grids that fail to account for curvature, but unless they had been exposed to the topic it would be easy to go astray.

Why the #%%$## don’t people just use the UTM co-ords?

Depending on the individual satellite photo strip, I’ve easily been able to zoom Google Earth to exact Siberian drillhole sites off recorded UTM co-ords where you can count the boulders in the stream nearby (only summer photos, of course)

Also, some of the reforest areas seem quite old. It might be complicated if plantation trees were sampled for dendro, especially if their sources (seed/cutting/sub-species?) were from elsewhere.