In this companion piece to this month’s feature article “Ground Control in Baghdad,” Karen Meckel, PLS, provides intriguing insight and additional details about the monumentation, survey plans and fieldwork that her group performed in Iraq.

The temperature is 130 F. The sand you’re standing in is burning your feet, and you just finished your last bottle of water. You’re supposed to be staking the boundary on a piece of land near Baghdad, but you’ve been running your total station for less than an hour and have already begun to feel the effects of heat exhaustion. ...