THE REPUBLIC OF BY Clifford J. Mugnier, CP, CMS, FASPRS R 70 65 io 60 s J uru Bôca do Acre i- The Grids & Datums column has completed an exploration of P R P ira ara o i ná Ri e Pôrto o d a J M a io Velho m R a Bolivia r i Abunã every country on the Earth. For those who did not get to enjoy this R International boundary i o Ariquemes Rio Branco J National capital 10 o a 10 ac c I i io re p R c a Railroad A r io a R n world tour the first time,PE&RS is reprinting prior articles from á Assis Guayaramerín Road Brasil Brasiléia Guajará-Mirim Presidente Iñapari Cobija Riberalta 0 50 100 150 Kilometers BRAZIL Médici s the column. This month’s article on The Republic of Bolivia was io D e d 0 50 100 150 Miles re d a Transverse Mercator Projection, CM 64 W M ío Puerto R Puerto Ustarez Costa Marques a originally printed in 2001 but contains updates to their coordinate n Maldonado R e u/c r i é í r o R u n io r o I t G u e o Vilhena u J a B m n po ré o a a R i o m ío í It R R M a én e s z o Magdalena system since then. í Santa Ana R de Yacuma a um Yac PERU Río Rurrenabaque Trinidad he Bolivian highlands were the location of Barra do 15 R 15 ío Bugres S a Pontes e i n a Juliaca re P u a Lacerda u b g Lago éc a fe Caranavi S lo r rry Río a the advanced Tiahuanaco culture, circa the Titicaca P R í Puno o G Copacabana ra Cáceres o n i d e R th th ré San Ignacio Desaguadero La Paz a San Matías p de Velasco ha 7 to 11 centuries. The Aymara Indians Guaqui Viacha C ío Yapacani R P R a ío n BRAZIL - Moquegua Am D e Cochabamba es ric th aguadero an Montero Toquepala H T Charaña i Ilo g followed and were conquered in the 15 century h Santa Cruz w Oruro a y San José Tacna de Chiquitos Aiquile Roboré Uncia ri ua by the Inca Indians. The Incas were subsequently Arica aq R Puerto T Lago Challapata ío io Grande Suárez R Poopó Sucre Corumbá Tarabuco R í conquered in the 1530s by Hernando Pizarro, the o Potosí Zapiga P i Capitán P l a c n o Pablo Lagerenza m - Salar de a 20 A Camiri 20 y m Uyuni o General Iquique e Uyuni r i (salt pan) half-brother of Francisco Pizarro who conquered c Eugenio Garay a n H i SOUTH g h w a Ollagüe Villamontes Fuerte Olimpo y Peru. Bolivia achieved independence from Spain PACIFIC Tarija Tupiza Pôrto OCEAN Fortín Murtinho Yacuiba CHILE Villazón Infante PARAGUAY Tocopilla Rivarola La Quiaca Mariscal by proclamation of Simón Bolívar on August 6, R R Estigarribia Filadelfia ío í Loa o Calama Tartagal Rí P o a R Ve San Ramón rd r ío e a de la P g Mejillones San Pedro ilc u o a 1825 when General Antonio José de Sucre invaded de Atacama Nueva Orán m y ay o Concepción Pozo Antofagasta ARGENTINA San Salvador Colorado Río Characas. A map of Bolivia that was printed on a de Jujuy Te u San Pedro co Socompa Salta Las Lomitas 1928 Bolivian postage stamp precipitated a war 70 65 60 Base 803201AI (G00397) 4-06 with Paraguay in the 1930s over the Gran Chaco region! After learning about that postage stamp, I of altitudes and astronomical positions, the latter of which began collecting “map stamps” of the world. were used for many years as the basis for survey work in and The eastern part of Bolivia has low, hot, fertile land wa- for all compiled maps of the areas he covered. His determi- tered by many rivers. In the central part of the eastern slope nations of altitudes in the Cordillera Real not only attracted of the Andes, there is a high plateau region that includes part the attention of other explorers to this hitherto little-known of the Gran Chaco. Lake Titicaca is in the western part of section of the Andes, but also gave rise to much controversy. the central ranges and the highest peaks which include Cer- That was because they indicated that the highest crests of the ro Illimani at 6,882 m. The lowest point in Bolivia is the Rio Bolivian section of the Andes were among the highest, if not Paraguay at 90 m. actually the highest, in the whole Cordillera. It was believed, Bolivia has had a cartographical history quite unlike that up to that time, that the snow-capped volcanoes of Ecuador of any of the other west coast republics of South America. Not held that distinction. Meanwhile in 1830, Alcide d’Orbigny, a only did the period of instrumental surveys begin much later French anthropologist and geologist, had begun the explora- in the Republic of Bolivia, but until 1921, when the Amer- tions that resulted in his Carte Générale de la République de ican Geographical Society began the compilation of the La Bolivia at a scale of approximately 1:1,575,000, published in Paz 1:1,000,000 sheet, there had never been a general map of 1835-1847 in his Voyage dans l’Amérique Méridionale. the country that could be described as an exhaustive compi- Thanks to Sequoia Read of the Defence Geographic and lation. J. B. Pentland, an English explorer and cartographer, Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing opened the era of exploration and discovery in Bolivia with Vol. 85, No. 5, May 2019, pp. 341–342. his work on the Altiplano and in the Eastern Cordillera of 0099-1112/18/341–342 the Andes that he carried out in 1827 and 1828. His surveys and later work in 1837-1838 were published as charts by the © 2019 American Society for Photogrammetry British Admiralty in 1830 and 1839, respectively. The most and Remote Sensing important part of Pentland’s work was his determinations doi: 10.14358/PERS.85.5.341 PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING & REMOTE SENSING May 2019 341 May 2019 Layout.indd 341 4/19/2019 10:48:11 AM Imagery Intelligence Agency, I received excerpts of a 1935 referenced to the WGS 72 Datum where the Northern Stan- book entitled, Die Karten der Cordillera Real und des Talk- dard Parallel jn = – 12° South, the Southern Standard Par- essels von La Paz (Bolivien). The authors were Prof. Dr. Carl allel js = – 20° South, the False Northing Latitude of Origin Troll, and the famous photogrammetrist, Dr. Richard Finster- jo = – 20° South, the Central Meridian λo = – 64° West of walder!Finsterwalder detailed his excellent terrestrial photo- Greenwich, and the False Easting is 500 km. The ellipsoid of grammetric survey of the volcanoes around La Paz. reference is the WGS 72 where a = 6,378,135 meters and the The “Topographic Desk of the Southeast” was combined reciprocal of flattening, 1/f = 298.26. Other ancient Datums with the “Major General Topographic Cabinet of the State” known to exist in Bolivia include the Arequipa Astro from the in 1936 to form the Instituto Geográfico Miliar (IGM). Initial- boundary surveys of the 19th century with Peru, and the Pepi- ly formed in the city of Cuevo, the institute was relocated to to and Poto Astros. John W. Hager believes that the vertical Cochabamba in 1939 and finally moved to La Paz in 1942. By Datum is referenced to Arica in Chile. the end of 1948, “La Ley de la Carta” (The Law of the Map) was decreed establishing IGM as the monopoly for mapping the nation. I have discussed this concept common to many UPDATE Latin American nations as a vehicle to help fund the military Since 2001, Bolivia has entered into a cooperative agreement because of the low existing tax base. Argentina (see PE&RS, for the Geocentric Reference System for the Americas, termed December, 1999, pp. 1361-1363) and Ecuador (see PE&RS, “SIRGAS,” a Spanish acronym. Extensive geophysical re- May, 1998, pp. 542-543) are no exceptions to this custom. search has been initiated in Bolivia with respect to crustal The southwestern portion of Bolivia is well controlled with motion and volcanic activity. The CGPS network in coun- classical triangulation arcs, and some high-precision electron- try consists of 43 CGPS station sites, with 11 GPS stations ic distance meter traverses cover the southeastern portion of recently installed in response to the Pisagua 8.2 magnitude the country. The northern half of Bolivia is relatively devoid earthquake on 1 April 2014. As of November, 2014 more than of triangulation control. Vertical control does extend to the 240 GPS stations had been observed with dual-frequency GPS northern provinces, and 1:50,000-mapping covers the south- receivers.1, 2 ern half completely and the northern latitudinal half of the northern half. Topography of the Uyuni salt flats determined with kinematic The Republic of Bolivia is on the Provisional South Amer- GPS was published in 2008.3 ican Datum of 1956 (PSAD 56) with the origin in the town Significant gravity survey were published in 2015 for the Bo- of La Canoa, Venezuela where Φo = 08° 34´ 17.170˝ North, livian Central Andean Plateau,4 but there seems to be zero Λo = – 63° 51´ 34.880˝ West of Greenwich, and the defining data publicly available on transformation parameters from azimuth to station Pozo Hondo (αo) = 40° 22´ 45.96˝.