At my place of employment, we have a vegetation survey program with enough potential plots to serve 50 years of data collection. The points are laid out in a Generalized Random Tessellation Stratified (GRTS) to maximize the statistical power of the analyses we do with them. Read more about GRTS. I dare you. Actually, it’s not so bad if you understand Quad-Trees and the like– it’s just a wicked clever way to ensure spatially-balanced random sampling in order to maximize power.

But GRTS is not the point. The point is that we wanted to show in a map a 40 ft meter buffer, with some cues for the cardinal directions for our field staff. We also wanted them to be able to make their own maps. Enter some funky complex symbolization with a dashed line for the buffer, and dots for the cardinal directions, kind of like thousands of compass roses across the landscape:

(BTW, find the flaw in this approach and you get my praise. That and a dollar will buy you a cup of coffee– hint: we’re working in a State Plane that is Lambert Conformal Conic).

SLD below:

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