Reciprocal leveling

Prepared by:
Suman Jyoti
Reciprocal leveling
Reciprocal leveling: Is to find the difference in elevation between
two faraway points, the observations are fraught with errors. The
errors may arise out of the curvature of the earth or intervening
atmosphere (associated with variation in temperature and
refraction) or instrument (due to error in collimation) or any
combination of these.
Aim: To find accurate relative elevations of two widely separated
inter visible points (between which levels cannot be set),
reciprocal leveling is being used.
Apparatus Used :
1) Level
2) Staff
3) Tape
4) Pins
5) Tripod
Procedure
When it is necessary to run levels accurately over rivers and
other obstacles where the BS and FS distances must
necessarily be different, a procedure called reciprocal leveling
is used. This provides another way to cancel or average out
instrumental errors as well as the effects refraction and the
earth’s curvature.

This procedure involves two instrument setups, one near by

each point. From each instrumental position, BS on point A
and an FS on point B are taken, and an elevation is computed
for point B. This will result in two different elevations for B,
due to the natural and instrumental errors. But by average the
two elevations, the effects on the errors are cancelled out, and
the ‘true’ or most probable elevation is obtained.
Procedure
Calculation
ΔA= (a –b) ΔB= (a’ –b’)
TΔ= (DEA+ DEB)/2 = [(a -b) + (a’ –
b’)]/2 Elev. BMB= Elev. BMA±TΔ
where:
ΔA = the mean difference in elevation between A and B
with level at left
ΔB = the mean difference in elevation between A and B
with level at right
TΔ= the true mean difference in elevation between A and B
Error= ΔA-ΔB
Calculation