Has anyone done this? Seismic

I haven't done anything like this, but I wouldn't do it if I wasn't allowed access to all pertinent records.

> I was able to rubber sheet in the map since it has section lines on it and I've located them and when I did the main east-west lines shot points hit on an old dozer scar that appears on photos. This is clearly the north location of the east-west line, but the east-west position of the points is really a guess. When I put my points on the ground, they simply don't relate to the old given elevations and shifting them doesn't help. It could be that the elevations for the seismic and well locations were done with an altimeter, that's my guess anyway.

Does the old dozer trail have definite endpoints that would bracket the series of shot points? I would have thought that the locations and elevations were taken by stadia methods in the 1950's.

Do the elevations make any more sense if the series is reversed to run in the opposite direction?

Does the old dozer trail have definite endpoints that would bracket the series of shot points? I would have thought that the locations and elevations were taken by stadia methods in the 1950's.

the dozer trail was mostly run across hills and cutting a trail through ravines, so as the points hit a hill it shows up, mainly to allow the drill rig to poke a hole into the ground for the shot. I did find a pile of rocks right next to my rubber sheeted "main" hole (the point they really think is "hot" to drill), no rocks anywhere near the area, so I'm guessing that is the spot. Lots of guesses on this one;-)

Good idea about reversing the line, but I tried it quickly and it didn't help much, the line goes downhill running east to west and the elevations do also.

Wellll...yeah...

I've had the [enlightening] experience of “retracing” numerous IP (induced polarization), resistivity, gravity, ground-mag, and seismic LINES (and or grids) over the years.

Some (a few) were pretty 'tight,' others, were...well... “all over the place.”

In my experience, LINES [bearings] were usually run using a Compass, and with very few exceptions, the DISTANCES (along the 'lines') were SLOPE CHAINED (but [often] NOT corrected to horizontal). So the ends of the lines were usually somewhat (if not MUCH) closer to the “baseline” than plotted (assumed). In undulating terrain, this created some interesting (and non-linear) distortions. Local attraction often put some pretty big “wowies” in the lines, and generally speaking, the “true” locations rarely fit the “idealized” (plotted) positions very well (sometimes many hundreds of feet).

Exactly how 'elevations' were determined ranged from “picking them of a quad” (sometimes 15' quads), to altimeters or inclinometers, or "just guessing." Bear in mind that the Brunton Pocket Transit was the weapon of choice for a LOT of these “surveys.”

Good luck, and happy hunting...

Loyal

I bought a truck and survey equipment at an auction in the late 80's. The company was apparently a "doodle-bugger" seismic outfit.

While there was a Wild theodolite and a Nikon level, neither was actually serviceable. The prism in the level was hung-up and the bottom motion on the Wild was frozen, with the motion knob sheared off. There was only half of a fiberglass level rod in the mix. The most worn out was the 300' steel tape, followed by numerous other rag and plastic measuring tapes.

Most interesting was a homemade wooden file cabinet FULL of old quad maps. They had lines struck across them with ball point pen and elevations "picked" at certain stations. It was apparent that someone was producing topo notes from rough measurements and quad maps. I imagine that was all the precision they wanted or needed.

From what I saw from the equipment, their surveys and notes were probably "crude" at their best.

I did make 500 bucks reselling the wore out Suburban...;-)

I had a coworker that is a Mining Engineer.

He said they did a lot of topographic surveying with a pocket transit. This was to calculate the volume of the overburden.

Loyal

Did you ever find any of the old shot holes? For this line they were drilled 60-80' deep then the charge was set off, but I couldn't see evidence of them, only the piled stones near where I rubber sheeted in SP4-120, but nothing to hang my hat on.

this is what the dozer trail looks like now, cutting across hills:

and through a ravine:

not real clear, but clearly the line on the ground and related to the points.

I asked if they should do new seismic and they looked at me like I was crazy, it must be very expensive;-)

Mighty:

Back in the 50's a lot of the seismic drill holes had a "monkey hat" stuck in them to more or less seal them off to keep cattle, other livestock, animals and other critters from falling or stepping in them. You might try your metal detector as the "monkey hats" were galvanized metal, so you may get lucky in finding some of them.

Loyal

Yeah...sometimes.

Often all that was left (that could be identified) were the "drill cuttings" which were usually a different color, and grain size, than the surrounding "dirt."

Sometimes there as "driller spoor" around the sites as well.

Loyal

You bet!

In-situ uranium, test holes for coal, test holes for gold, test holes for water, old oil, old gas and old seismic. Pretty much the standard out here.

If you can find a few holes and 'get on' to the coordinate base, it may all start to look better.

They (the operator) probably has NAD27 coordinates for the holes, but you won't be able to take those coordinates and convert them to anything of value. Typically they will tie to a central datum point, with some basis of bearing assumed to someplace, and everything will be ground distances.

My expectations are +/-200 feet for a datum point, 5 degrees for the backsight, then +/- 5% on every traverse for each leg to each hole.

The elevations are probably scaled off of topo maps. The horizontal positions of the traverse ends were probably scaled off of topo maps, then eyeballed into place, and then run with a compass.

I have seen some real messes. It is surprising that they won't let you look at what they have. Perhaps not copy it, but just look at it. Tell them you are getting old and you won't remember anything that you see, you just need to get the lay of the land. (In my case this is certainly true.) When you find the right map, you will be able to figure out where they started and what the datum (starting point) was.

Good luck! It sounds like a fun (really, not kidding.)

M

Thanks for the info Charles, I will try my detector, the main guys said they cut off the shot wire which was copper and very thin, not suitable to locate with my stuff

Loyal

we were looking for just that, had a driller with but no one could make anything resolve into cuttings. Maybe we are too far off the points:-(

But 60 years is a long time in the wind and snow

Around here we would find those monkey hats with wire attached up in the vegetation and tree limbs and nearby would be a disturbed place in the ground at the drill site.

The wire made great car stereo wire as it was easy to place undetected from dash to rear deck and strong enough to last and of good enough quality to work very well.

The local crews would run mag bearings by transit and some would actually turn angles while chainmen using 300ft chains that never left the ground.

A few would use plane tables at natural elevated observation sites and utilize stadia and triangulation to produce their maps.

A lot of them set concrete cones ±3"-4" wide on top and ±1 foot long w/a little wire handle into the shot hole if they didn't have a monkey hat.
Most seismic lines I found in SE NM and West TX were not tied in to section lines, they were run on SPCs from a Tri Station and the section lines were from something similar to the Tobin Maps (prehistoric GIS), BUT they may have tied some section corners for a basis of their sketch.

I worked on a seismograph crew for 2 years, 79 to 81. Scaled coordinates from a topo map, stadia for elevations. Tied into spot elevations at road intersections. The elevations were generally accepted to be +/- 3 feet but that was at the station on line, not necessarily at the actual shothole.

The shotholes could easily be 50 - 100 feet left or right of the line in rough terrain.
In rocky areas they used air drills instead of water. A lot of open areas were done with vibraseise and would not have any shotholes. I don't think that would have been done back in the 50's though.

James

> The shotholes could easily be 50 - 100 feet left or right of the line in rough terrain.

Wouldn't you expect them to fall along a dozer trail, though, since the drilling rig had to somehow get to the drill site and a bulldozed road would probably be the best way to get there?

> > The shotholes could easily be 50 - 100 feet left or right of the line in rough terrain.
>
> Wouldn't you expect them to fall along a dozer trail, though, since the drilling rig had to somehow get to the drill site and a bulldozed road would probably be the best way to get there?

Yes they will be in an area the rig can get to but this may not fall on the straight line. Sometimes the seismic line is dozed straight but the rig can not get to a point so they offset to the side where they can get which may or may not have been dozed if it was naturally clear.

I have been doing seismic for over twenty years. Everything we do now is surveyed with RTK and tied to OPUS but we did some crazy things when I first started. A client would typically give us a line location hand drawn on a topo map. We would go to the field and find the location by scaling off the topo map and then use a compass to doze the line. Once dozed we would use a chain to mark the stations at the desired interval. Elevations were determined in several ways depending on how much the client wanted to spend. We picked them from a topo map, used a clinometer, or used a surveyor with actual surveying equipment. Around the mid nineties GPS really started taking over and made things a lot easier and more accurate.

After the holes were drilled, the jug buggies still had to get thru. The holes were typically drilled to one side or the other. If it fell on the side of a hill, they may offset to the nearest spot flat enough to setup the drill. I'm not sure they even used buggies in that area, they may have hauled the jugs in a truck.

James

I seem to remember a thread many moons back, that related to "local elevation" data, i.e. a datum that was not tied to NGVD29 or NAVD88, but "kinda" local. Do you have one of those where you are at? If you don't know, have you occupied some of the hard points and checked apples to apples, regarding the z component?