When quantifying sugar production in tax records, there were discrepancies in the units used. For 1889-1902, some estates lacked data in pounds and instead had several hogsheads, a large cask typically for liquids, usually alcoholic beverages. This was notable since sugar is not typically measured by volume, raising questions about the reasons behind this method and suggesting they might have found it more resourceful to use barrels for storing and counting sugar. 

Hogsheads were each supposed to be 1,500 pounds, but this calculation was not exact in some cases where both pounds and hogsheads were provided. Multiplying the number of hogsheads by 1,500 would return a number close but not exact to the number of pounds. For example, Estate Betty’s Hope in 1890 recorded 333 Hhds. but 500,170 lbs. of sugar. Multiplying 333 Hhds. by 1,500 returns a value of 499,500 lbs., a discrepancy of 670 lbs. or around 0.1%. Therefore, for the estates with no data in pounds, like Estates Cane Garden and Concordia East, this calculated estimation from the number of hogsheads was used but with the understanding that there would be slightly less accuracy than with other estates. Once all conversions were completed, the GIS team could use the data to visually present the varying levels of sugar production across the island of St. Croix.

The largest challenge faced by the archival team was the lack of consistent data on the enslaved population per estate available for analysis. Some years in the archived tax data files contained over 800 pages of information, while others had only four. The inaccessibility of information creates gaps in the data, making it difficult to accurately assess the impact of our variables on the island's soil chemistry. These knowledge gaps stem from various factors, including inadequate record-keeping by plantation owners, lack of thorough verification by government officials, absence of digital scans for many records, and issues of legibility and file degradation, resulting in missing pages with complete details for each estate. Many numbers in our diagrams are rough estimates intended to provide an approximate understanding of these variables over time and in comparison to one another when presented on a map.

For our project, we were researching data dating back to the early 18th century and sometimes even into the 17th century. At the time, English and Danish were heavily utilized on the island due to the settler colonialism on St. Croix. Many of the documents our team sought to analyze (especially the ones regarding windmills) at the beginning of our research endeavors were written in Danish, making it extremely difficult for our team to decipher their meaning; we did not have the time to translate the documents. Many documents held in the Royal Danish Archives, which may have held important information, were unavailable to us for research as a result. Additionally, the complex and often unintelligible handwriting found on 18th and 19th-century historical documents was difficult for our team to read, especially when taking data from many pages of records.