928
October 2014
PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING & REMOTE SENSING
Armenians were scattered across the empires of Ottoman
Turkey and Persia, with diaspora colonies from India to
Poland. The Armenians rarely lived in a unified empire,
but stayed in distant mountain provinces where some
would thrive while others were depopulated. The seat of the
Armenian Church wandered from Echmiadzin to Lake Van
and further west for centuries.
“The Russian victory over the Persian Empire, around 1828,
brought the territory of the modern-day Armenian republic
under Christian rule, and Armenians began immigrating to
the region. The Tsarist authorities tried to break theArmenian
Church’s independence, but conditions were still preferable to
those in Ottoman Turkey, where many Armenians still lived.
When the latter pushed for more rights, Sultan Abdulhamid
II responded in 1896 by massacring between 80,000 and
300,000 Armenians. The European powers had talked often
about the ‘Armenian Question’, considering the Armenians
a fellow Christian people living within the Ottoman Empire.
During WWI some Ottoman Armenians sided with Russia in
the hope of establishing their own nation state. A triumvirate
of pashas who had wrested control of the Empire viewed
these actions as disloyal, and ordered forced marches of
all Armenian subjects into the Syrian deserts. What is less
certain – and remains contentious to this day – is whether
they also ordered pogroms and issued a decree for Armenians
to be exterminated. Armenians today claim that there was
a specific order to commit genocide; Turks strenuously deny
this. What is inescapable is the fact that between 1915 and
1922 around 1.5 million Ottoman Armenians died.
“The first independent Armenian republic emerged in
1918, after the November 1917 Russian Revolution saw the
departure of Russian troops fromthe battlefront withOttoman
Turkey. It immediately faced a wave of starving refugees,
the 1918 influenza epidemic, and wars with surrounding
Turkish, Azeri and Georgian forces. It fought off the invading
Turks in 1918, and left the final demarcation of the frontier
to Woodrow Wilson, the US president. Meanwhile, the Turks
regrouped under Mustafa Kemal (later Kemal Ataturk) and
overran parts of the Caucasus. Wilson’s map eventually
arrived without troops or any international support, while
Ataturk offered Lenin peace in exchange for half of the new
Armenian republic. Beset by many other enemies, Lenin
agreed.
“The Armenian government, led by the Dashnaks, a
party of Armenian independence fighters, capitulated
to the Bolsheviks in 1921. They surrendered in order to
preserve the last provinces of ancient Armenia. The Soviet
regime hived off Karabakh and Naxçıvan (Nakhchivan) for
Azerbaijan. Forced from their homes, hundreds of thousands
of survivors regrouped in the French-held regions of Syria
and Lebanon, emigrating en masse to North America and
France. Remarkably, the Armenians who stayed began to
rebuild with what was left, laying out Yerevan starting in the
1920s. Armenia did well in the late Soviet era, with lots of
technological industries and research institutes. Armenians
voted for independence on 21 September 1991”
(Lonely
Planet, 2014)
.
Bordered by Azerbaijan (996 km) (
PE&RS
, September
2010), Georgia (219 km) (
PE&RS
, June 2012), Iran (44 km)
(
PE&RS
, August 2013), and Turkey (311 km) (
PE&RS
,
September 2005); Armenia is slightly smaller than Maryland.
The terrain consists of highland with mountains, little forest
land, fast flowing rivers, and good soil in the Aras River
valley. The lowest pint is the Debed River (400 m), and
the highest point is Aragats Lerrnagagat (4,090 m)
(World
Factbook, 2014)
.
By 1912, the majority of Armenia had been covered by 1
st
Order classical triangulation surveyed by the Russian Army.
The triangulation and 1:42,000 scale topographic mapping
was referenced to the prime meridian at Pulkovo Observatory
in St. Petersburg, Russia where: Φ
o
= 59° 46′ 18.55″ North,
Λ
o
= 30° 19′ 42.09″ East of Greenwich. The ellipsoid of reference
used at the time was the Walbeck where:
a
= 6,376,896
meters and
1
/
f
= 302.78. Pendulum gravity observations
were made near the cities of Dilijan and Gyumri. However,
precise leveling lines bypassed Armenia in favor of Georgia
and Azerbaijan
(Anuario del Instituto Geografico Militar,
Buenos Aires, 1914).
The majority of positioning performed
in Armenia during the latter half of the 20
th
century has been
with reference to the traditional System 42 Datum referenced
to the Krassovsky 1940 ellipsoid where
a
= 6,378,245.0
meters, and
1
/
f
= 298.3. With its origin still at Pulkovo
Observatory, the defining azimuth at the point of origin to
Signal A is: α
o
= 317° 02′ 50.62″.
On 11 March 2002, the Republic of Armenia passed
decision Number 225, declaring WGS 84 as the official Datum
of the country. From 2005-2008, Geographic Information
Systems were carried out in Ashtarak, Tsakhkadzor,
Byureghavan and in the Administrative Districts of Yerevan
(Arabkir, Davtashen, Kanaker-Zeytun, Avan, Nor Nork,
Achapnyak, Nork-Marash, Malatia-Sebastia, Nubarashen,
and Erebuni). By 2010, the Republic planned to implement
GPS Continuously Operating Reference Systems throughout
the country
(Global Navigation Satellite Systems: Armenian
Experience, by H. Vardges, Chisinau Moldova, May 2010)
.
The contents of this column reflect the views of the author, who is
responsible for the facts and accuracy of the data presented herein.
The contents do not necessarily reflect the official views or policies of
the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing and/
or the Louisiana State University Center for GeoInformatics (C
4
G).
