Administered Lands is a BLM Alaska GIS dataset that combines publicly available borough, municipality, state, federal, and other entity management and ownership GIS data. This is the basis for BLM’s national Surface Management Agency GIS dataset that was developed to fulfill the public and Government’s need to know what agency is managing Federal land in a given area. This data set is comprised of various sources of geospatial information that have been acquired from local, state and federal agencies in order to assemble a comprehensive representation of current land surface manager. There are many land managing agencies and branches of government and this dataset attempts to classify these entities into general categories. This data does not demonstrate or infer land ownership. The business need for this data includes, but is not limited to, land use planning, permitting, recreation, and emergency response. Due to the nature of assembling geospatial information from multiple sources, integration of features into a single layer may introduce inaccurate artifacts. Acquired datasets have been cross-walked to a standardized schema to aid in the depiction of land surface manager across the state of Alaska. This dataset will contain errors. For the most up to date and accurate information, please contact the surface manager agency for the area in which you are interested.

Managing 245 million acres of land and 700 million acres of mineral estate is a big task. The BLM recognizes that geospatial information is a critical tool for managing public lands. We’ve already made great strides in creating national datasets, supporting almost every program in the Bureau. The BLM has adopted a ground-up approach to managing public lands, and the geospatial program is providing the structure and tools to accomplish this strategy. We manage spatial data to support multiple activities at varying scales.

The BLM's geospatial strategy focuses on collection, organization, and use of baseline resource management data, like fenceline and transportation data and enhancing predictions based on geospatial data. Examples of activities that require geospatial data include planning and resource management, special status species monitoring, regional mitigation, and renewable energy projects, just to name a few.

An important factor in implementing our strategy is using a geographic information system (GIS) that is consistent and integrated within the Bureau and the Department of the Interior. This internal cohesion enhances the BLM's ability to partner with other Federal agencies, collaborate with State and Tribal governments, and communicate with the public.

PLSS Intersected is all of the PLSS feature at the atomic or smallest polygon level. This dataset represents the GIS Version of the Public Land Survey System including both rectangular and non-rectangular surveys. The primary source for the data is cadastral survey records housed by the BLM supplemented with local records and geographic control coordinates from states, counties as well as other federal agencies such as the USGS and USFS. The data has been converted from source documents to digital form and transferred into a GIS format that is compliant with FGDC Cadastral Data Content Standards and Guidelines for publication. This data is optimized for data publication and sharing rather than for specific "production" or operation and maintenance.The service referred in this item is published by BLM. Please refer to the metadata for contact information.Contact: GIS.Librarian@FloridaDEP.gov

The SMA implementation is comprised of one feature dataset, with several polygon feature classes, rather than a single feature class. SurfaceManagementAgency: The Surface Management Agency (SMA) Geographic Information System (GIS) dataset depicts Federal land for the United States and classifies this land by its active Federal surface managing agency. A Federal SMA agency refers to a Federal agency with administrative jurisdiction over the surface of Federal lands. Jurisdiction over the land is defined when the land is either: Withdrawn by some administrative or legislative action, or Acquired or Exchanged by a Federal Agency. The GIS data contained in this dataset represents the polygon features that show the boundaries for Surface Management Agency and the surface extent of each Federal agencyâs surface administrative jurisdiction. SMA data depicts current withdrawn areas for a particular agency and (when appropriate) includes land that was acquired or exchanged and is located outside of a withdrawal area for that agency. The SMA data do not illustrate land status ownership pattern boundaries or contain land ownership attribute details. This layer is also updated whenever BLM is notified that Lands have been acquired by other Federal Agencies. For addtional information regarding an acquistion search the Bureaus LR2000 system:The LND_SurfaceEstate data is edited and maintained in a single polygon feature class. Whenever possible, BLM lands are constructed from the Public Land Survey System (PLSS), also available to the public (PublicLandSurvey.gdb). Alignment of BLM data with the PLSS is a continual process, as the accuracy and density of PLSS data continues to improve and develop. Issues of misalignment with the PLSS are more common with non-BLM management areas. These discrepancies are being addressed at the BLM California State office based on U.S. Department of Interior priorities throughout the State of California.

These are Rights-of-Ways (ROW) on Idaho BLM land (and some other Federal agency land) as shown on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Master Title Plats (MTP). Every GIS ROW feature has a "CASEFILE" value, also known as the serial number of the ROW. This corresponds to the LR2000 database, which is a national BLM database for federal lands information. This GIS ROW feature class can be joined or related to exported information from LR2000 using the "CASEFILE" (GIS) and "SERIAL_NR_FULL" (LR2000) fields. NOTE: the LR2000 information is only available to internal BLM users and is not available to the public as it contains sensitive information. This ROW data for any given area may not be complete due to new ROW activity or because of missed or coincident ROW features during the initial data creation. It is recommended that a thorough inventory of all ROWs in a specific project area be obtained (an LR2000 report can provide this) and the GIS ROW data be checked before using this data for projects needing utmost ROW accuracy. The ROW data that was digitized is what was present on the MTP at the time of the digitizing done for that township. The project was performed over several years. Therefore, the "early" townships digitized are more out of date regarding ROWs compared to the ones more recently digitized. Unfortunately, there is no attribute that indicates the digitizing sequence. Any updates to this ROW feature class should be sent to the BLM Idaho State Office GIS staff for incorporation into the statewide GIS ROW feature classes for improvement over time. For more information contact us at blm_id_stateoffice@blm.gov.

One-eighth of the United States (247.3 million acres) is managed by the Bureau of Land Management. As part of the Department of the Interior, the agency oversees the 30 million acre National Landscape Conservation System, a collection of lands that includes 221 wilderness areas, 23 national monuments and 636 other protected areas. Bureau of Land Management Lands contain over 63,000 oil and gas wells and provide forage for over 18,000 grazing permit holders on 155 million acres of land. Dataset SummaryPhenomenon Mapped: United States lands managed by the Bureau of Land ManagementGeographic Extent: Contiguous United States and AlaskaData Coordinate System: WGS 1984Visible Scale: The data is visible at all scales but draws best at scales larger than 1:2,000,000.Source: BLM Surface Management Agency layer, Rasterized by Esri from features May 2025.Publication Date: December 2024This layer is a view of the USA Federal Lands layer. A filter has been used on this layer to eliminate non-Bureau of Land Management lands. For more information on layers for other agencies see the USA Federal Lands layer.What can you do with this layer?This layer is suitable for both visualization and analysis across the ArcGIS system. This layer can be combined with your data and other layers from the ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World in ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS Pro to create powerful web maps that can be used alone or in a story map or other application.Because this layer is part of the ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World it is easy to add to your map:In ArcGIS Online you can add this layer to a map by selecting Add then Browse Living Atlas Layers. A window will open. Type "bureau of land management" in the search box and browse to the layer. Select the layer then click Add to Map.In ArcGIS Pro open a map and select Add Data from the Map Tab. Select Data at the top of the drop down menu. The Add Data dialog box will open on the left side of the box expand Portal if necessary then select Living Atlas. Type "bureau of land management" in the search box, browse to the layer then click OK.In both ArcGIS Online and Pro you can change the layer's symbology and view its attribute table. You can filter the layer to show subsets of the data using the filter button in Online or a definition query in Pro.The data can be exported to a file geodatabase, a shape file or other format and downloaded using the Export Data button on the top right of this webpage.This layer can be used as an analytic input in both Online and Pro through the Perform Analysis window Online or as an input to a geoprocessing tool, model, or Python script in Pro.The ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World provides an easy way to explore many other beautiful and authoritative maps on hundreds of topics like this one.Questions?Please leave a comment below if you have a question about this layer, and we will get back to you as soon as possible.

The SMA implementation is comprised of one feature dataset, with several polygon feature classes, rather than a single feature class. SurfaceManagementAgency: The Surface Management Agency (SMA) Geographic Information System (GIS) dataset depicts Federal land for the United States and classifies this land by its active Federal surface managing agency. A Federal SMA agency refers to a Federal agency with administrative jurisdiction over the surface of Federal lands. Jurisdiction over the land is defined when the land is either: Withdrawn by some administrative or legislative action, or Acquired or Exchanged by a Federal Agency. The GIS data contained in this dataset represents the polygon features that show the boundaries for Surface Management Agency and the surface extent of each Federal agency's surface administrative jurisdiction. SMA data depicts current withdrawn areas for a particular agency and (when appropriate) includes land that was acquired or exchanged and is located outside of a withdrawal area for that agency. The SMA data do not illustrate land status ownership pattern boundaries or contain land ownership attribute details. This layer is also updated whenever BLM is notified that Lands have been acquired by other Federal Agencies. For additional information regarding an acquisition search the Bureau's LR2000 system: The LND_SurfaceEstate data is edited and maintained in a single polygon feature class. Whenever possible, BLM lands are constructed from the Public Land Survey System (PLSS), also available to the public (PublicLandSurvey.gdb). Alignment of BLM data with the PLSS is a continual process, as the accuracy and density of PLSS data continues to improve and develop. Issues of misalignment with the PLSS are more common with non-BLM management areas. These discrepancies are being addressed at the BLM California State office based on U.S. Department of Interior priorities throughout the State of California

This layer is sourced from gis.wim.usgs.gov.

1.27.2014 --ESM-- created for DOI building location map.

This geodatabase of point, line and polygon features is an effort to consolidate all of the range improvement locations on BLM-managed land in Idaho into one database. Currently, the polygon feature class has some data for all of the BLM field offices except the Coeur d'Alene and Cottonwood field offices. Range improvements are structures intended to enhance rangeland resources, including wildlife, watershed, and livestock management. Examples of range improvements include water troughs, spring headboxes, culverts, fences, water pipelines, gates, wildlife guzzlers, artificial nest structures, reservoirs, developed springs, corrals, exclosures, etc. These structures were first tracked by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in the Job Documentation Report (JDR) System in the early 1960s, which was predominately a paper-based tracking system. In 1988 the JDRs were migrated into and replaced by the automated Range Improvement Project System (RIPS), and version 2.0 is currently being used today. It tracks inventory, status, objectives, treatment, maintenance cycle, maintenance inspection, monetary contributions and reporting. Not all range improvements are documented in the RIPS database; there may be some older range improvements that were built before the JDR tracking system was established. There also may be unauthorized projects that are not in RIPS. Official project files of paper maps, reports, NEPA documents, checklists, etc., document the status of each project and are physically kept in the office with management authority for that project area. In addition, project data is entered into the RIPS system to enable managers to access the data to track progress, run reports, analyze the data, etc. Before Geographic Information System technology most offices kept paper atlases or overlay systems that mapped the locations of the range improvements. The objective of this geodatabase is to migrate the location of historic range improvement projects into a GIS for geospatial use with other data and to centralize the range improvement data for the state. This data set is a work in progress and does not have all range improvement projects that are on BLM lands. Some field offices have not migrated their data into this database, and others are partially completed. New projects may have been built but have not been entered into the system. Historic or unauthorized projects may not have case files and are being mapped and documented as they are found. Many field offices are trying to verify the locations and status of range improvements with GPS, and locations may change or projects that have been abandoned or removed on the ground may be deleted. Attributes may be incomplete or inaccurate. This data was created using the standard for range improvements set forth in Idaho IM 2009-044, dated 6/30/2009. However, it does not have all of the fields the standard requires. Fields that are missing from the polygon feature class that are in the standard are: ALLOT_NO, POLY_TYPE, MGMT_AGCY, ADMIN_ST, and ADMIN_OFF. The polygon feature class also does not have a coincident line feature class, so some of the fields from the polygon arc feature class are included in the polygon feature class: COORD_SRC, COORD_SRC2, DEF_FET, DEF_FEAT2, ACCURACY, CREATE_DT, CREATE_BY, MODIFY_DT, MODIFY_BY, GPS_DATE, and DATAFILE. There is no National BLM standard for GIS range improvement data at this time. For more information contact us at blm_id_stateoffice@blm.gov.

This data set is a result of compiling differing source materials of various vintages. Source material examples used to create and maintain dataset include: BLM 100k Surface Map Publications, Master Title Plats, Public Land Survey GIS Data (cadnsdi v.2.0), Field Office GIS Data, Compiled 24k USGS Maps, and Land Records. Ongoing updates are made.

This dataset represents the GIS Version of the Public Land Survey System including both rectangular and non-rectangular surveys. The primary source for the data is cadastral survey records housed by the BLM supplemented with local records and geographic control coordinates from states, counties as well as other federal agencies such as the USGS and USFS. The data has been converted from source documents to digital form and transferred into a GIS format that is compliant with FGDC Cadastral Data Content Standards and Guidelines for publication. This data is optimized for data publication and sharing rather than for specific 'production' or operation and maintenance. This data set includes the following: PLSS Fully Intersected (all of the PLSS feature at the atomic or smallest polygon level), PLSS Townships, First Divisions and Second Divisions (the hierarchical break down of the PLSS Rectangular surveys), and the Bureau of Census 2015 Cartographic State Boundaries. The Entity-Attribute section of this metadata describes these components in greater detail. Please note that the data on this site, although published at regular intervals, may not be the most current PLSS data that is available from the BLM. Updates to the PLSS data at the BLM State Offices may have occurred since this data was published. To ensure users have the most current data, please refer to the links provided in the PLSS CadNSDI Data Set Availability accessible here: https://gis.blm.gov/EGISDownload/Docs/PLSS_CadNSDI_Data_Set_Availability.pdf or contact the BLM PLSS Data Set Manager.The service referred in this item is published by BLM. Please refer to the metadata for contact information.Contact: GIS.Librarian@FloridaDEP.gov

Downloaded on 10/25/2023 from: https://databasin.org/datasets/1cb6eabad6bf48b5b8e24f45b33ff028/BLM LUPA General Public LandsGeneral Public Lands ("Unallocated Lands" in the Proposed LUPA). Designation on BLM-administered lands that do not have a specific land allocation or designation. These areas are available to renewable energy applications but are not subject to permit review streamlining or other incentives, and thus would be subject to site-specific plan amendment for such development. The Approved LUPA includes CMAs that apply to activities in General Public Lands.Data Provided By:BLM, ASPEN, DUDEK, CECContent date: September 2016Citation:September 2016. BLM LUPA Record of Decision for the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan and CDCA Amendment.Contact Organization:US Bureau of Land Management, California Office.Contact Person(s):not specifiedUse Constraints:This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Surface Management Agency: The Surface Management Agency (SMA) Geographic Information System (GIS) dataset depicts Federal land for the State of South Dakota, and classifies this land by its active Federal surface managing agency. A Federal SMA agency refers to a Federal agency with administrative jurisdiction over the surface of Federal lands. Jurisdiction over the land is defined when the land is either: Withdrawn by some administrative or legislative action, or Acquired or Exchanged by a Federal Agency. This layer is a dynamic assembly of spatial data layers maintained at various federal and local government offices. The GIS data contained in this dataset represents the polygon features that show the boundaries for Surface Management Agency and the surface extent of each Federal agency's surface administrative jurisdiction. SMA data depicts current withdrawn areas for a particular agency and (when appropriate) includes land that was acquired or exchanged and is located outside of a withdrawal area for that agency. The SMA data does not illustrate non-federal land status ownership pattern boundaries or contain land ownership attribute details. Current information for other Federal and State agencies can be found on their respective entities.

Administered Lands depicts the surface management agency (federal, state) or identifies lands as private. Administered Lands is a BLM Alaska GIS dataset that combines publicly available borough, municipality, state, federal, and other entity management and ownership GIS data. This is the basis for BLM’s national Surface Management Agency GIS dataset that was developed to fulfill the public and Government’s need to know what agency is managing Federal land in a given area.

This spatial data contains Surface Management Agency (SMA, also sometimes called Land Status) information for Idaho from the Idaho Bureau of Land Management (BLM). For federal government lands, this data displays the managing agency of the surface of the land, which does not mean the agency "owns" the land. SMA is sometimes referred to as "ownership", although this term is inaccurate when describing public lands. This Surface Management Agency data should not be used to depict boundaries (for example National Forest, National Park, National Wildlife Refuge, or Indian Reservation boundaries among others). Attribute information for the federal and private lands are from the BLM Master Title Plats (MTPs), the BLM case files, the BLM Legacy Rehost 2000 (LR2000) database, and corresponding federal Orders and official documents. Please note that because these official sources are strictly used, OTHER NON-BLM FEDERAL AGENCY LANDS MAY NOT BE ATTRIBUTED CORRECTLY unless the proper documents have been filed with the BLM and the land actions have been noted on the MTPs and in LR2000. Starting in the spring of 2011 a field called AGNCY_NAME is present in the data. The AGNCY_NAME field is intended to indicate the managing agency for polygons coded as OTHER in the MGMT_AGNCY field. The AGNCY_NAME field will not be used for the 100K Map Series published by the BLM for use by the public as all agencies in this field are not included in H-1553 Publication Standards Manual Handbook and, therefore, have no BLM Cartographic Standard. Except for polygons coded as OTHER in the MGMT_AGNCY field, all managing agency information in the AGNCY_NAME field should be the same as that of the MGMT_AGNCY field. The only intended difference between the AGNCY_NAME field and the MGMT_AGNCY field is where the MGMT_AGNCY is OTHER. In this case, the AGNCY_NAME will contain an abbreviation for an agency that is not represented in the H-1553 Publication Standards Manual Handbook. Examples of the agencies there are BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs), USGS (United States Geological Survey), and FAA (Federal Aviation Administration). Attribute information for the State lands is received primarily through cooperation with the Idaho Department of Lands. This information might not reflect all State agency lands completely. A detailed analysis of State owned lands has not been done since June 2011; therefore, recent changes in ownership of State lands may not be reflected. Inclusion of State land information into this dataset is supplemental and should not be viewed as the authoritative source of State lands; please contact State agencies for questions about State lands. This data does not depict land management arrangements between government agencies such as Memorandums of Understanding or other similar agreements. When this data was originally generated in the early 2000's, the primary source of the geometry was the BLM Geographic Coordinate Database (GCDB), if it was available. In areas where GCDB was/is unavailable, the spatial features are taken from a variety of sources including the BLM Idaho Resource Base Data collection, BLM Idaho Master Title Plat AutoCad files, US Geological Survey Digital Line Graphs (DLGs), and US Forest Service Cartographic Feature Files (CFFs), among others (see Process Steps). It should be stressed that the geometry of a feature may not be GCDB-based in the first place, the geometry may shift away from GCDB due to a variety of reasons (topology procedures, automated software processes such as projections, etc.), and the GCDB-based features are not necessarily currently being edited to match improved GCDB. Therefore this data should NOT be considered actual GCDB data. For the latest Idaho GCDB spatial data, please contact the BLM Idaho State Office Cadastral Department at 208-373-4000. The BLM in Idaho creates and maintains this spatial data. This dataset is derived by dissolving based on the "MGMT_AGNCY" field from the master SMA GIS dataset (which is edited often) kept by the BLM Idaho State Office. Please get a fresh copy of this data a couple times a year as the SMA data is continually changing. Official actions that affect the managing agency happen often and changes to correct errors are always being made. Nevada SMA data was acquired from the BLM Nevada web site and clipped to the area that is managed by Idaho BLM Boise District. The data steward approved this dataset in October 2023.

For more information contact us at blm_id_stateoffice@blm.gov.

The USGS Protected Areas Database of the United States (PAD-US) is the nation's inventory of protected areas, including public open space and voluntarily provided, private protected areas, identified as an A-16 National Geospatial Data Asset in the Cadastral Theme (http://www.fgdc.gov/ngda-reports/NGDA_Datasets.html). PAD-US is an ongoing project with several published versions of a spatial database of areas dedicated to the preservation of biological diversity, and other natural, recreational or cultural uses, managed for these purposes through legal or other effective means. The geodatabase maps and describes public open space and other protected areas. Most areas are public lands owned in fee; however, long-term easements, leases, and agreements or administrative designations documented in agency management plans may be included. The PAD-US database strives to be a complete “best available” inventory of protected areas (lands and waters) including data provided by managing agencies and organizations. The dataset is built in collaboration with several partners and data providers (http://gapanalysis.usgs.gov/padus/stewards/). See Supplemental Information Section of this metadata record for more information on partnerships and links to major partner organizations. As this dataset is a compilation of many data sets; data completeness, accuracy, and scale may vary. Federal and state data are generally complete, while local government and private protected area coverage is about 50% complete, and depends on data management capacity in the state. For completeness estimates by state: http://www.protectedlands.net/partners. As the federal and state data are reasonably complete; focus is shifting to completing the inventory of local gov and voluntarily provided, private protected areas. The PAD-US geodatabase contains over twenty-five attributes and four feature classes to support data management, queries, web mapping services and analyses: Marine Protected Areas (MPA), Fee, Easements and Combined. The data contained in the MPA Feature class are provided directly by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Marine Protected Areas Center (MPA, http://marineprotectedareas.noaa.gov ) tracking the National Marine Protected Areas System. The Easements feature class contains data provided directly from the National Conservation Easement Database (NCED, http://conservationeasement.us ) The MPA and Easement feature classes contain some attributes unique to the sole source databases tracking them (e.g. Easement Holder Name from NCED, Protection Level from NOAA MPA Inventory). The "Combined" feature class integrates all fee, easement and MPA features as the best available national inventory of protected areas in the standard PAD-US framework. In addition to geographic boundaries, PAD-US describes the protection mechanism category (e.g. fee, easement, designation, other), owner and managing agency, designation type, unit name, area, public access and state name in a suite of standardized fields. An informative set of references (i.e. Aggregator Source, GIS Source, GIS Source Date) and "local" or source data fields provide a transparent link between standardized PAD-US fields and information from authoritative data sources. The areas in PAD-US are also assigned conservation measures that assess management intent to permanently protect biological diversity: the nationally relevant "GAP Status Code" and global "IUCN Category" standard. A wealth of attributes facilitates a wide variety of data analyses and creates a context for data to be used at local, regional, state, national and international scales. More information about specific updates and changes to this PAD-US version can be found in the Data Quality Information section of this metadata record as well as on the PAD-US website, http://gapanalysis.usgs.gov/padus/data/history/.) Due to the completeness and complexity of these data, it is highly recommended to review the Supplemental Information Section of the metadata record as well as the Data Use Constraints, to better understand data partnerships as well as see tips and ideas of appropriate uses of the data and how to parse out the data that you are looking for. For more information regarding the PAD-US dataset please visit, http://gapanalysis.usgs.gov/padus/. To find more data resources as well as view example analysis performed using PAD-US data visit, http://gapanalysis.usgs.gov/padus/resources/. The PAD-US dataset and data standard are compiled and maintained by the USGS Gap Analysis Program, http://gapanalysis.usgs.gov/ . For more information about data standards and how the data are aggregated please review the “Standards and Methods Manual for PAD-US,” http://gapanalysis.usgs.gov/padus/data/standards/ .

Surface Management Agency: The Surface Management Agency (SMA) Geographic Information System (GIS) dataset depicts Federal land for the State of Montana, and classifies this land by its active Federal surface managing agency. A Federal SMA agency refers to a Federal agency with administrative jurisdiction over the surface of Federal lands. Jurisdiction over the land is defined when the land is either: Withdrawn by some administrative or legislative action, or Acquired or Exchanged by a Federal Agency. This layer is a dynamic assembly of spatial data layers maintained at various federal and local government offices. The GIS data contained in this dataset represents the polygon features that show the boundaries for Surface Management Agency and the surface extent of each Federal agency's surface administrative jurisdiction. SMA data depicts current withdrawn areas for a particular agency and (when appropriate) includes land that was acquired or exchanged and is located outside of a withdrawal area for that agency. The SMA data does not illustrate non-federal land status ownership pattern boundaries or contain land ownership attribute details. Current information for other Federal and State agencies can be found on their respective entities.

These are Rights-of-Ways (ROW) on Idaho BLM land (and some other Federal agency land) as shown on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Master Title Plats (MTP). Every GIS ROW feature has a "CASEFILE" value, also known as the serial number of the ROW. This corresponds to the LR2000 database, which is a national BLM database for federal lands information. This GIS ROW feature class can be joined or related to exported information from LR2000 using the "CASEFILE" (GIS) and "SERIAL_NR_FULL" (LR2000) fields. NOTE: the LR2000 information is only available to internal BLM users and is not available to the public as it contains sensitive information. This ROW data for any given area may not be complete due to new ROW activity or because of missed or coincident ROW features during the initial data creation. It is recommended that a thorough inventory of all ROWs in a specific project area be obtained (an LR2000 report can provide this) and the GIS ROW data be checked before using this data for projects needing utmost ROW accuracy. The ROW data that was digitized is what was present on the MTP at the time of the digitizing done for that township. The project was performed over several years. Therefore, the "early" townships digitized are more out of date regarding ROWs compared to the ones more recently digitized. Unfortunately, there is no attribute that indicates the digitizing sequence. Any updates to this ROW feature class should be sent to the BLM Idaho State Office GIS staff for incorporation into the statewide GIS ROW feature classes for improvement over time.

The Surface Management Agency (SMA) Geographic Information System (GIS) dataset, found in the A-16 National Geospatial Data Asset Portfolio, depicts federal land in the U.S. This tile layer portrays a subset of the SMA GIS dataset. It depicts the SMA land in the U.S. not including private or unknown lands. It is available to the ArcGIS.com tiling scheme level 14 (town level or approximately 1:36,000 scale). It currently covers all of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Western State Offices including Alaska. The SMA data are extracted from federal land status records. The official federal land status records of the appropriate surface land managing agency should be consulted concerning ownership details including interest in the federal subsurface mineral estate.The GIS data contained in this dataset depict the surface extent of each federal agency’s surface administrative jurisdiction. SMA data depict current withdrawn areas for a particular agency and (when appropriate) includes land that was acquired or exchanged and is located outside of a withdrawal area for that agency. The SMA data do not illustrate land status ownership pattern boundaries or contain land ownership attribute details. For more information about this BLM National SMA dataset, click here.Thumbnail source image courtesy of: Bureau of Land Management

This data represents the GIS Version of the Public Land Survey System including both rectangular and non-rectangular survey data. The rectangular survey data are a reference system for land tenure based upon meridian, township/range, section, section subdivision and government lots. The non-rectangular survey data represent surveys that were largely performed to protect and/or convey title on specific parcels of land such as mineral surveys and tracts. The data are largely complete in reference to the rectangular survey data at the level of first division. However, the data varies in terms of granularity of its spatial representation as well as its content below the first division. Therefore, depending upon the data source and steward, accurate subdivision of the rectangular data may not be available below the first division and the non-rectangular minerals surveys may not be present. At times, the complexity of surveys rendered the collection of data cost prohibitive such as in areas characterized by numerous, overlapping mineral surveys. In these situations, the data were often not abstracted or were only partially abstracted and incorporated into the data set. These PLSS data were compiled from a broad spectrum or sources including federal, county, and private survey records such as field notes and plats as well as map sources such as USGS 7 ½ minute quadrangles. The metadata in each data set describes the production methods for the data content. This data is optimized for data publication and sharing rather than for specific "production" or operation and maintenance. A complete PLSS data set includes the following: PLSS Townships, First Divisions and Second Divisions (the hierarchical break down of the PLSS Rectangular surveys) PLSS Special surveys (non-rectangular components of the PLSS) Meandered Water, Corners, Metadata at a Glance (which identified last revised date and data steward) and Conflicted Areas (known areas of gaps or overlaps or inconsistencies). The Entity-Attribute section of this metadata describes these components in greater detail. The second division of the PLSS is quarter, quarter-quarter, sixteenth or government lot division of the PLSS. The second and third divisions are combined into this feature class as an intentional de-normalization of the PLSS hierarchical data. The polygons in this feature class represent the smallest division to the sixteenth that has been defined for the first division. For example In some cases sections have only been divided to the quarter. Divisions below the sixteenth are in the Special Survey or Parcel Feature Class. In the Public Land Survey System a Township refers to a unit of land, that is nominally six miles on a side, usually containing 36 sections.