Litchfield Mine GCP Placement 4/11/2016

Introduction

The purpose of the class on April 11th was to place permanent GCP's at the Litchfield Mine site. Our professor Dr. Joe Hupy recently was awarded the Regent Scholar award from the University Wisconsin System Board of Regents'.  The award is to facilitate exploration in assessing inventory of aggregate mines. Dr. Hupy created a partnership with The Kraemer Company to access a aggregate mine site near the city of Eau Claire.  The access will allow Dr. Hupy and the researchers to continually fly UAS missions to assess the stock piles of aggregate materials at the site. GCP's are one of the components required for the accuracy needed to complete volumetrics of the aggregate piles. The goal was to place the GCPs all around the mine site where they will remain visible for all future flights.

Methods

During last weeks class time we built our own GCP markers.  Dr. Hupy purchased 4 ft by 8 ft sheets of 1/4 inch thick black plastic. We cut the sheets down to 2 ft by 2 ft squares.  We then cut a triangle out of a piece of plywood which was the same size at the plastic.  The triangle was used as a stencil to create the GCP point in the middle of the sheet (Fig. 1).

(Fig. 1) Plywood with triangle cut out laid over top of the black plastic 2x2 plastic sheet.

We then used florescent green spray paint to color in the triangle.  After letting the first side dry we flipped the plywood sheet the opposite direction to create and "hour glass" shape on the sheet (Fig. 2). Additionally, we added letters to each marker for data tracking purposes. The last step was to drill holes in the corners for anchoring purposes.

(Fig. 3) Completed GCP marker with painted triangle and letter.

Now we had to place the GCP markers.  We met at the Litchfield mine in the afternoon of 4/11/2016. We were met by a representative from Kraemer to help us select appropriate locations to place the GCP markers which would not impede their production operation.

After placing and anchoring the marker we utilized a dual frequency GPS to collect the location (Fig. 4). We completed the same task for all of the place GCP markers.

(Fig. 4) Collection of the location of the GCP marker using the dual frequency GPS.

Results

(Fig. 4) Display of placed GCP Markers at the Litchfield mine site.