How do surveyors measure through trees?

How do we measure a boundary when the property line is covered with trees? It could be a thick bushline of a farm or even just a large cedar hedge on a normal urban subdivision lot.

While trees definitely can get in the way when trying to measure across large distances they don’t usually pose a problem for basic stakeouts.

Simply put, we don’t actually need to see down a property line to be able to stake it out. We calculate the boundary relative to control points that we set anywhere, mainly in the most convenient and highly visible locations. We calculate the relative position of any object from these control points in a process called coordinate geometry. Once the boundary is calculated, we can set stakes online at any point visible from these control points (usually set far offline). Using GPS also allows for easy stakeouts since the control points don’t even need to be visible to the point on the line being staked.

In the past, surveyors would need a clear sight down the limit in order to stake it out because they didn’t have the tools or the mathematical skills to calculate coordinates the way we can today. We only need to see or access at the location where the stake is to be placed and can set any control point to accommodate this.