19 Header Professional Land Surveyors of Oregon | www.plso.org Member Spotlight Around 2008, Joe responded to a levee breaking around Klamath Lake. The flood water primarily affected crop land, but water flow was also threatening homesites downstream. They were tasked with mapping the scour limits and helping calculate a volume of earth/rock to fill the void and repair the levee. They used RTKGPS (because the manual and robotic gun could not keep up from shore) combined with dive rescue side scan sonar data to map the area quickly. Young‘s involvement with PLSO dates to his OIT college days when he was a member of the student chapter and even served as treasurer of the local chapter. After a hiatus during his full-time military service, he reconnected with the organization about three years ago. When the South-Central chapter had gone dormant, Young helped revitalize it and now serves as the chapter Secretary. “For the past two and a half years, we have been trying to keep things going and get the professionals in the Klamath Basin to come to meetings again,” he says. “We‘re trying to put on programs and keep up involvement.” Throughout his career, Young has found ways to integrate his surveying background with his military service and other interests. In college, he even combined his passion for motorsports with surveying outreach. “I was sponsored by PLSO to buy some safety equipment for a trophy truck race vehicle,” he recalls. “I got to put the logo on the side of the truck and race it to the fairgrounds. Surveying is an unknown profession for the most part, but I was trying to spread the word even back then.” As Young prepares for the next chapter in his career, he looks forward to fully embracing land surveying once again. Since he is not licensed in Oregon yet (but plans to be within the year), he can’t be a PLSO board member. But when the time comes, he would like to be more involved. “I have a passion for it and want to be involved again,” he says, “and I’m making that happen.” This photo was taken in 2003 with a disposable camera in Northern California, west of Redding, near the small town of Del Loma. Joe was searching for original survey monuments based off suspected fraudulent field notes from the late 1800s. “Made the job tricky when you can’t find something that was never there,” he says.
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