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Nate Eide – Land Commissioner

Fran Kaliher – Public Land Survey Technician

MSPS 61st Annual Meeting – 2013

“GET IT SURVEYED!”

We are not surveyors, nor pretend to be. Our goal is to be a

centralized location of information. We leave the real survey work to you! Anything I say that sounds

like we do survey work is not intended.

Lake County 4th largest county in MN - 1.4M acres 83% publicly owned (58% Fed, 13%

State, 12% County) Population of 10,866 (2010 Census) –

130 acres/person! NO COUNTY SURVEYOR since 1948

Lake County Forestry 160,000 acres of mostly Tax Forfeited

land Managed for timber resources FSC certified Staff

1 administrative assistant 4 foresters 1 public land survey technician 1 Land Commissioner

Nate Eide B.A. Biology – natural

resources emphasis Graduate degree in GIS 7 years as GIS Specialist

Forest inventory Application development GIS management

11 Months as Land Commissioner

Fran Kaliher B.A. Biology 20 years as Land Survey

Field Crew Chief Field crew supervisor Instrument person Legal records research

12 years as Public Land Survey Technician Database of survey and

PLS information Field searches for corners

or evidence

GIS is Crucial for Our Operation Imagery – multiple years and seasons Forest Inventory Timber Sales Plantations Ownership Roads Topography Streams Lakes Wetlands Sensitive Features Ecological Information

Started with all Shapefiles and Coverages Managed by outside vendors

Paper maps

Technology Increased “user-friendly” Managed outside vendor/in house

Now Stored Mostly in Geodatabases Managed strictly in house

Hired full time GIS staff in 2005 (me) and 2010

Corners are still in shapefile, but will be in Geodatabases soon

Parcel Project

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All Field Data Digitally Collected Custom ArcPad Apps

Field Rugged PDA Juniper Archer

Bluetooth GPS Garmin (recreation grade)

SxBlue (sub-meter)

Hand-held GPS Trimble GeoXT

Garmin 76

With no County Surveyor, there wasn’t a centralized location for information

Foresters working with GIS consultant, Pro West (late ‘80s)

Sources Forester Knowledge

GPS (PLGR, Garmin, Trimble)

Other Lake County Departments

DNR

USFS

Township and Section Lines

Originally from DNR (USGS topo maps)

Now edited to match found evidence and monuments

The Difference Typically 50’ – 300’ different than USGS/DNR corners

Range is 50’ – 1528’ (worst is northern Lake County)

Average of 242’ difference

All sources are public information

Database is shared with surveyors and land resource managers on a case-by-case basis on request

Entire table is not shared, only by section

Individual corner information about certified corners and/or corners known to be accepted by registered surveyors is shared with the public. If coordinates are available [for those corners], the public is informed that only the monument itself represents the corner, regardless of where their handheld device leads them

G.I.S!!

DNR/Topo Line

Line Adjustment After USFS-Commissioned Survey

3,628 records

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FIELDS Explanation

ALPH__ID Alphanumeric corner name

TWP Township

RNG Range

COR_ID Type of record: monument/evidence, with/out

coordinates

MONUMENT_E Type of monument or evidence

SET_BY Who set the corner

YR_SET Year corner was set

SEEN When last observed

OBSERVER Who observed

X X UTM coordinate (meters)

Y Y UTM coordinate (meters)

GPS_CODE Type of GPS used

SOURCES Where the information came from

LINK_ Notepad document Y/N

COMMON_ Common Township corner

BEARINGTR1 Bearing tree information and other corner notes

BEARINGTR2

BEARINGTR3

BEARINGTR4

BT_S_SET_B Who set the BTs and when

ENTRY_BY_W When this record was entered

COR_ID2 Monument type, certified, accuracy

PHOTOLINK Link to photo of corner

CERT_LINK Hotlink to certificate of corner

Corner Naming Alpha-numeric system

Monument/Evidence

“Yellow Tag”

“Wood Post”

“WCMC”

“USFS Pipe”

“Scribed wood post”

“Rusty old tag on wd post”

“cert” (certificate)

“capped RB”

“¾” RB”

GPS Code

0 = survey grade

1 =engineering grade (+/- 3’-10’) ProXR, Trimble, etc.;

(1) = computed from 1’s or better

2 = resource grade (+/- 10’-30’) Garmin handhelds;

(2) = computed from 2’s or better

X = not GPS’d, location is hypothetical/USGS estimate/guess/off photo

C = computed or graphically estimated, better than X

sometimes computeds are shown as (1) or (2) – see above

Bearing Trees COR_ID2 – combined attributes 1st digit). monument (M) vs. evidence (E) vs. searched, no

evidence (X) vs. computed (C)

2nd digit). certified [usually by corner certificate, sometimes by plat] (C) vs. not certified (N)

3rd digit). GPS/other field coordinates’ horizontal precision:

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Certificate Link [CERT_LINK]

Done using “Layer Properties” of layer in ArcMap

DETECTIVE WORK

Story of T58N R11W “White Pine”

2002 Corners 2008 Corners

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1500’ +/-

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USFS later monumented this corner based on the recovered evidence

PLSS Zoom Tool Add Table Data to Database

ArcGIS “tool” Makes everything line up

Looks for errors in section and township

Helps fix errors

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Very interesting history lessons

Mutual benefit of information

GIS is very useful

ANY QUESTIONS?

Nate Eide nate.eide@co.lake.mn.us

Fran Kaliher fran.kaliher@co.lake.mn.us

218-834-8340