Owning land in Mallorca sometimes creates the need for a topographic study. You might need a topographic plan for the design of a golf course, for instance, or a topographic survey of a hillside or simply a topographic reference for a building site. You might also need some topographic help in the case of litigation with an uncompromising neighbour. The Catastro office in Palma de Mallorca offers topographic plans of most fincas in Mallorca but, often these seem to lack in detail. Such plans are available from the Internet, but you would need a Referencia Catastral to find the piece of land in question. For anything more reliable, with added detail and less vague, you might have to appoint one of the professionals. Often, an aerial photograph is also very valuable. These can be purchased from companies specialized in that field. Such photographs are being taken at regular intervals and are available for purchase for the actual evidence of the past thirty years or so.

Topography involves the recording of the three-dimensional quality of the surface and its terrain, and the identification of specific landforms. This is also known as geomorphometry. In modern usage, this involves generation of elevation data in electronic form. Not all that many years ago, before the onset of the digital age, a topographic survey was quite a tedious task and rather time consuming. But nowadays, with the aid of GPS, computers and digital sensor readers, it all seems a piece of cake. Expensive equipment is needed for the precision involved though, and thus, topographic studies do not come cheap.

The photo was taken near Felanitx, Mallorca, Baleares, Spain. The date: March 15th, 2010. The time was 11:11:25.