Alexander
Wallace

A field guide for land use research in Saint Lucia

Tools of the Trade

Tools of the Trade

Survey kit, software and paper

Alexander Wallace in a relaxed portrait at the end of a long research day, hair loose and tonal

The working kit is small. Most of it is older than I am. The list below is the version I would set up today if I were starting from scratch on a Saint Lucia based research practice.

In the field

  • GNSS rover with RTK correction service — for clean position fixes on accessible parcels.
  • Robotic total station — for sites with thick canopy where GNSS does not reach.
  • 30-metre fibreglass tape and a small notebook — for arguments with the rover.
  • Phone camera with location stamps enabled — for photographs that will need to be tied back to a coordinate.
  • Hard hat, sun hat, water, and a printout of the working overlay at A3.

On the desk

  • QGIS as the daily working surface — for cheap, fast, scriptable overlays.
  • ArcGIS Pro when a client needs interoperability with their existing licensed setup.
  • A flatbed scanner with at least 600 dpi colour for estate maps.
  • A consistent CRS — for Saint Lucia I default to UTM Zone 20N and document every reprojection.
  • Plain text logs of every overlay decision, kept in the project folder, never only in my head.