{{description}}

Minnesota's original public land survey plat maps were created between 1848 and 1907 during the first government land survey of the state by the U.S. Surveyor General's Office. This collection of more than 3,600 maps includes later General Land Office (GLO) and Bureau of Land Management maps up through 2001. Scanned images of the maps are available in several digital formats and most have been georeferenced.

The survey plat maps, and the accompanying survey field notes, serve as the fundamental legal records for real estate in Minnesota; all property titles and descriptions stem from them. They also are an essential resource for surveyors and provide a record of the state's physical geography prior to European settlement. Finally, they testify to many years of hard work by the surveying community, often under very challenging conditions.

The deteriorating physical condition of the older maps (drawn on paper, linen, and other similar materials) and the need to provide wider public access to the maps, made handling the original records increasingly impractical. To meet this challenge, the Office of the Secretary of State (SOS), the State Archives of the Minnesota Historical Society (MHS), the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT), MnGeo and the Minnesota Association of County Surveyors collaborated in a digitization project which produced high quality (800 dpi), 24-bit color images of the maps in standard TIFF, JPEG and PDF formats - nearly 1.5 terabytes of data. Funding was provided by MnDOT.

In 2010-11, most of the JPEG plat map images were georeferenced. The intent was to locate the plat images to coincide with statewide geographic data without appreciably altering (warping) the image. This increases the value of the images in mapping software where they can be used as a background layer.

A spatial to locations depicted in the Surveyor-General's maps

The Digital Geologic Map of the U.S. Geological Survey Mapping in the Western Portion of Amistad National Recreation Area, Texas is composed of GIS data layers complete with ArcMap 9.3 layer (.LYR) files, two ancillary GIS tables, a Map PDF document with ancillary map text, figures and tables, a FGDC metadata record and a 9.3 ArcMap (.MXD) Document that displays the digital map in 9.3 ArcGIS. The data were completed as a component of the Geologic Resources Inventory (GRI) program, a National Park Service (NPS) Inventory and Monitoring (I&M) funded program that is administered by the NPS Geologic Resources Division (GRD). Source geologic maps and data used to complete this GRI digital dataset were provided by the following: Eddie Collins, Amanda Masterson and Tom Tremblay (Texas Bureau of Economic Geology); Rick Page (U.S. Geological Survey); Gilbert Anaya (International Boundary and Water Commission). Detailed information concerning the sources used and their contribution the GRI product are listed in the Source Citation sections(s) of this metadata record (wpam_metadata.txt; available at http://nrdata.nps.gov/amis/nrdata/geology/gis/wpam_metadata.xml). All GIS and ancillary tables were produced as per the NPS GRI Geology-GIS Geodatabase Data Model v. 2.1. (available at: http://science.nature.nps.gov/im/inventory/geology/GeologyGISDataModel.cfm). The GIS data is available as a 9.3 personal geodatabase (wpam_geology.mdb), and as shapefile (.SHP) and DBASEIV (.DBF) table files. The GIS data projection is NAD83, UTM Zone 14N. The data is within the area of interest of Amistad National Recreation Area.

The Surveying and Mapping Services industry in Canada has weathered uncertain conditions as downstream industries including residential, commercial, industrial construction and government authorities, fared with volatility brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. The industry's performance is largely tied to developments in residential and nonresidential construction markets, which fuel both private- and public-sector spending.As Canadian oil, gas and mining companies cut back spending on exploration and development projects in response to falling commodity prices, and construction stalled in resource-rich provinces, demand for surveying and mapping services for these projects fell. While growth from the residential construction market helped offset some losses, rising interest intended to offset rising inflation have hampered residential demand. Thus, even as energy prices came roaring back, many surveyors saw a reduction in demand. Over the five years to 2023, industry revenue has been contracting at a CAGR of 1.7% and is expected to reach $1.7 billion, including an expected drop of 3.2% over the current year.The return to growth of downstream construction markets will likely keep industry demand afloat moving forward. In addition to solid demand from industrial building construction as commodity prices remain high, housing market expansion will stimulate demand for cadastral, property line and construction surveying. The continued adoption of new technology will also enable companies to realize new efficiencies and improve the quality of their services, expanding sizable profit margins further. Industry revenue is forecast to rise at a CAGR of 1.2% to $1.8 billion over the five years to 2028.

This dataset includes high quality (800 Dots Per Inch - DPI), 24 bit color images of Minnesota's original Public Land Survey (PLS) plats created during the first government land survey of the state from 1848 to 1907. Currently housed at the Office of the Secretary of State, these plats were created by the U.S. Surveyor General's Office. This collection of more than 3,600 maps also includes later General Land Office (GLO) and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) maps - up to the year 2001.

Minnesota's survey plat maps serve as the fundamental legal records for real estate in the state; all property titles and descriptions stem from them. They also serve as an essential resource for surveyors and as an analytical tool for the state's physical geography prior to European settlement. Finally, they serve as a testimony to years and years of hard work by the surveying community, often under challenging conditions.

In recent years the deteriorating physical condition of the older maps and the needs of technologically more sophisticated researchers, who require access to the maps, have made handling the original paper records increasingly less practical. To meet this challenge, the Office of the Secretary of State, the State Archives of the Minnesota Historical Society, the Minnesota Department of Transportation, MnGeo (formerly the Land Management Information Center - LMIC) and the Minnesota Association of County Surveyors collaborated in a digitization project which produced images of the maps in standard TIFF, JPEG and PDF formats - nearly 1.5 terabytes worth of data. Funding was provided by the Minnesota Department of Transportation.

These polygons are a graphical representation of maps recorded in Books of Records of Survey, Records of Santa Barbara County, California.

The record of survey is the means by which field surveys relating to property lines, land boundaries or other subjects are brought to public attention. For more information, please see the Santa Barbara County Surveyor's Manual at http://www.countyofsb.org/pwd/pwsurveyor.aspx?id=5116

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) collaborated on the creation of the global land datasets using Landsat data from 1972 through 2008. NASA and the USGS have again partnered to develop the Global Land Survey 2010 (GLS2010), a new global land data set with core acquisition dates of 2008-2011. This dataset consists of both Landsat TM and ETM+ images that meet quality and cloud cover standards established by the earlier GLS collections. Data acquired in 2011 were used to fill areas of low image quality or excessive cloud cover.

County Engineering Surveys

Contained within the 3rd Edition (1957) of the Atlas of Canada is a plate that shows four maps, circa 1955. On the left of this plate, the top map shows the extent of township and boundary surveys. The bottom left map shows the extent and type of air-photographic surveys. Air-photographic surveys have greatly facilitated the mapping of the country and serve many other uses as well. For purposes of accuracy, vertical photographs are preferable in that distortion is reduced to a minimum. Where speed has been a factor, trimetrogon surveys have been carried out. In this type of survey the aircraft carries three cameras, one of which takes vertical photographs and the other two oblique photographs on either side of the aircraft's track. Because of the wide coverage, fewer flights are required for oblique than vertical surveys. On the right of this plate, the upper map entitled Geodetic Surveys shows the triangulation areas in which precise control points have been established by the triangulation method, while the shoran trilateration symbols indicate precise control points established by that method. The bottom right map also entitled Geodetic Surveys shows precise and exploratory astronomical fixations which differ only in the amount of time and instrumentation required in taking the fixes. Both types of fixations are used as control points for surveys.

The TRSQ digital data set represents the Township, Range, Section, Quarter section, and Quarter-quarter section divisions of the state. Beginning in the late 1840s, the federal government began surveying Minnesota as part of the Public Land Survey System (PLSS). The resulting network of land survey lines divided the state into townships, ranges, sections, quarter sections, quarter-quarter sections and government lots, and laid the groundwork for contemporary land ownership patterns. The quarter-quarter section remains an important subdivision for rural Minnesota since these lines are used to define local boundaries, roads, and service areas. All survey lines were extended across water bodies despite the fact that U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) base maps depict them only on land. This addition allows all sections and townships to be represented as closed areas ensuring that township and range location can be determined for any point in the state. It also means that the data is not affected if lake levels change over time. The township, range and section boundaries were digitized at MnGeo (formerly the Land Management Information Center - LMIC) from the USGS 30' x 60' map series (1:100,000-scale). Quarter section and quarter-quarter section subdivisions were calculated using the section lines. They were not digitized from original plat book survey lines or from the meandered lines that surveyors laid out around water bodies. The existence of government lots within a quarter-quarter section is recorded in the data set; however, the government lot boundaries were not digitized. If a quarter-quarter section contains more than one government lot, the number of lots is recorded -- see Lineage, Section 2, for more detail. Note: For most uses, TRSQ has been superseded by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) 1:24,000-scale 'Control Point Generated PLS' data set which is free online. See https://gisdata.mn.gov/dataset/plan-mndnr-public-land-survey for more information. Also, many county surveyors offices have more accurate PLS (Public Land Survey) data sets. For county webpages and contact information, see http://www.mngeo.state.mn.us/cty_contacts.html .

This data set contains archival raw, partially processed, and ancillary/supporting radio science data acquired during the Mapping (MAP) phase of the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) mission. The radio observations were carried out using the MGS spacecraft and Earth-based receiving stations of the NASA Deep Space Network (DSN). The observations were designed to test the spacecraft radio system, the DSN ground system, and MGS operations procedures; to be used in generating high-resolution gravity field models of Mars; and for estimating density and structure of the Mars atmosphere. A small number of surface scattering experiments were also conducted. Of most interest are likely to be the Orbit Data File and Original Data Record files, in the ODF and ODR directories, respectively, which provided the raw input to gravity and atmospheric investigations. The MAP phase extended from March 1999 through January 2001. Data were organized in approximately chronological order and delivered on a set of 184 CD volumes at the rate of 2-3 CD's per week. Typical volume of a one-day ODF was 300-400 kB. Typical volume of an ODR was 5-10 MB, and there were typically 8-16 ODR's per day depending on DSN schedules and observing geometry.

This dataset consists of about 48 000 old survey sheets in 1:600 or 1:1 200 or 1:1 000 scale published between 1920s and 2011 in GeoTIFF format. These survey sheet images were scanned from paper maps and geo-referenced to the Hong Kong 1980 Grid coordinate system. The geo-referenced location is for general reference only and shall not be used for any work with precision.

Layers in this dataset represent Public Land Survey System subdivisions for Canadian County. Included are Townships, Sections, Quarter Sections and Government Lots. This data was created from 2019 to 2021 as part of a project to update county parcel data in partnership with ProWest & Associates (https://www.prowestgis.com/) and CEC Corporation (https://www.connectcec.com/). Corners were located to the quarter section level and additional corners were determined for the South Canadian River meanders based on the original government surveys. Quarter section corners were located using Certified Corner Records ( filed by Oklahoma licensed professional surveyors with the Oklahoma Department of Libraries where those records included coordinates. When a corner record could not be found or did not include coordinates, other interpolation methods were employed. These included connecting known corner record locations to unknown corners using data from filed subdivisions or from highway plans on record with the Oklahoma Department of Transportation. Where no corner records with coordinates were available and no interpolation methods could be used, aerial inspection was used to locate corners as the last option.Corner location accuracy varies as the method of locating the corner varies. For corners located using Certified Corner Records, accuracy is high depending on the age of the corner record and can possibly be less than 1 U.S. Foot. For corners located using interpolation methods, accuracy depends on the additional material used to interpolate the corner. In general, newer subdivisions and highway plans yield higher accuracy. For meander corners located using original government surveys, accuracy will be low due to the age of those surveys which date to the 1870's at the earliest. Additionally, corners that were located with aerials as the last available option cannot be assumed to be accurate.The data was built at the quarter section level first by connecting located corners and larger subdivisions were created from the quarter sections. For townships that extend into Grady County, township lines were only roughly located outside sections not in Canadian County.

The Point layer covers the State of Washington with a variety of different types of locations. The great majority of Points, point type 1, Corner Point, are located at the corners, or angle points, of Legal Description and Parcel areas. (See the metadata for Legal Description and Parcel.) Corner Points can represent differing types of locations such as surveyed monuments, locations calculated by survey, locations digitized from various maps like US Geological Survey quadrangles, and locations that serve no other purpose than to stabilize the endpoint of a Boundary or angle point of a Legal Description or Parcel. Points are the only features in the upland Cadastre that have attributes regarding the source and accuracy of the data. The known accuracy of the data varies dramatically from place to place. The attributes also indicate whether there is a known physical object to look for on the ground. The second type of Point, Geodetic Control Point, point type 2, is not currently populated. The third type of Point, Significant Coordinated Location, point type 3, can be used to store any type of point location that has cadastral significance. At present, the only Significant Coordinated Points in Cadastre are those points along the Washington Pacific Ocean coast which were used by the US Minerals Management Service to calculate the boundary of the State at one marine league from the coast.WA Public Land Survey Points MetadataClick to download

Map of the city of Washington D.C. in 1851 : established as the permanent seat of the government of the U.S. of Am. / James Keily, surveyor

National Land Surveying and Mapping Center 7 Map Sales Stations

Map exhibiting the property of the U.S. in the vicinity of the Capitol : colored red, with the manner in which it is proposed to lay off the same in building lots, as described in the report to the Sup't of the city to which this is annexed / BHLatrobe, one of the surveyors of the city of Washington, Dec. 3d 1815.

This coverage contains the section lines for the Public Land Survey System (PLSS). These lines form polygons which are labelled for PLSS township, range and section number. Coordinates were digitized from U. S. Geological Survey 7.5' topographic maps (paper copies) using a digitizing program developed in-house by the Geological Survey Bureau, Iowa DNR. The digitizing tablet accuracy was 1/50 inch. Section lines from individual quads were combined and edited using PC Arc/Info.

Alaska Survey Boundary contains miscellaneous state, federal, and private surveys. This shape file characterizes the geographic representation of land parcels within the State of Alaska contained by the Base - Survey Boundary category. It has been extracted from data sets used to produce the State status plats. This data set includes cases noted on the digital status plats up to one day prior to data extraction. Each state survey feature has an associated attribute record, including a Land Administration System (LAS) file-type and file-number which serves as an index to related LAS case-file information. Additional LAS case-file and customer information may be obtained at: https://dnr.alaska.gov/projects/las/ Those requiring more information regarding State land records should contact the Alaska Department of Natural Resources Public Information Center directly.