In this first post: what my background is and what this blog is about. Bonus: why the blog is called Flattening Earth.
About me
I won’t tell you my life story, but will quickly explain how my education and professional experience makes the content of this blog relevant to the geomatics community and to you.
I have a PhD in glaciology (part of Earth sciences): I was studying glaciers, and for those who really want to know, I was studying a particular type called debris-covered glaciers. If you are interested, please follow this link to my Researchgate page: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Pierre_Lardeux . I also have a Master’s degree in Ocean, Atmosphere and Hydrology and my research project was, you guessed it, on glaciers: this time a particular type of ice in Antarctica. To summarize, I am an Earth scientist specialized in glacial areas.
In the middle of all that, I also did a technical diploma in surveying, which led me to be a geodetic/study technician for the French National mapping agency (IGN). I was working in the Geodetic and Levelling Service and concretely I was doing GNSS (GPS+GLONASS+Galileo and their friends) calculation, reference datum conversion (advisor and grid calculation) and database maintenance. In brief, I was a land surveyor, who was not producing maps but managing all the tools necessary to produce them.
To top off my experience, I also taught some programming and I am personally keen on technology, past, present, and future.
Overall – I used geomatics in variety of cases for the last 15 years. I know the technical details of how it works. And I do my research before emitting an opinion!
Flattening Earth
The goal of geomatics is to collect, analyze and interpret data linked to the earth’s surface, in a digital form for maximum automation. In the end, it’s just the modern version of map making and distance measuring. From a more abstract point of view, maps, satellite images and drone mosaics are just trying to represent the spherical Earth surface (3D) into a 2D planar surface, to bring better understanding to us, humans. In short: making Earth flat.
In that spirit and following the book “Flattening the Earth: Two Thousand Years of Map Projections” by J.P Snyder, I decided to name my blog Flattening Earth, because my intention to flatten Earth for you, and bring you current events that could be better understood with a map, satellite image or analysis of any other geospatial data. For example, in our next post, we will have a closer look at the changes made by the Government of Alberta to provincial parks, with a map and a quick analysis of the numbers. Is the 0.3% of surface area affected the whole story or is there more to it?
See you in the next post comments.
Hibou Geomatics 