New Life for Old Maps General Land Office Plat And Survey Note Archival Efforts North Dakota State Water Commission

New Life for Old Maps Background Review the Primary Objectives Steps to Completion of Efforts / Technical Details Review of Data Delivery System Future Endeavors

Background According to North Dakota Century Code , (Custodian of government plats) “the state engineer shall be custodian of all plats, field notes, and records that have been or hereafter may be turned over to the state by the government.” A General Land Office (GLO) “plat is the drawing which represents the lines surveyed, established, retraced, or resurveyed, showing the direction and length of each line; the relation to the adjoining official surveys; the boundaries, description, and area of each parcel of the land; and, as far as practicable, the topography, culture, and improvements within the limits of the survey. Occasionally the plat may constitute the entire record of the survey." - BLM Manual of Surveying Instructions, pg. 191, Chp. 9, 1973.

The Project – Primary Objectives 1)Final product needed to be equal in quality to originals 2)Original GLOs and notes to be scanned once 3)Output image format to be industry standard 4)File sizes kept to a minimum 5)Scans of accompanying survey notes to be equal in quality to GLOs

The Project – Step One Establish Standards 1)Scan resolution set to 300 dots per inch (DPI) a)US Library of Congress resolution b)Looks just like the original upon plotting on inkjet plotter (One dot, or pixel, represents 9 feet on map)

The Project – Step One Establish Standards 2)GLO scans saved as Tagged Image File Format (TIFF) a)TIFF considered a “loss-less” format b)TIFF widely supported c)JPEG smaller sizes at cost of image quality d)MrSid compressed images not considered

The Project – Step Two Scanning GLOs scanned on 42 inch HP CC800PS scanner Re-Surveys scanned on Savin Digital Copier

The Project – Step Three Geo-Register Images 1)For use with contemporary Geographic Information Systems (GIS) data 2)Registered to UTM, zone 14, NAD83 3)Registered to 1:24,000 scale township grid 4)Thickness of linework typically.05” and represents approximately 132’ on ground 5)Images not Geo-Rectified

The Project – Step Four Data Delivery AKA Where do you go to get the data? orwww.swc.state.nd.us/dataresources/glosearchform.html

Other GLO and Survey Note Delivery Systems Michigan Michiganhttp:// Florida Floridahttp://data.labins.org/2003/index.cfm Bureau of Land Management – Colorado Bureau of Land Management – Coloradohttp:// California California

Archive Efforts Summary 1)Scanned 2,837 GLOs and accompanying file cabinets of re-survey notes 2)Files are industry standard formats 3)File sizes kept to a minimum / maintained quality 4)Designed 24/7 internet delivery system 5)Worked a deal with the BLM to get original notes 6)Archived valuable pieces of North Dakota’s historical documents

Future Efforts – Electronic Dissemination of Survey Control Information HARN Control NGS Horizontal and Vertical Control 3 rd Order Control State Engineer Control

Future Efforts - Obtaining Benchmark Information 1)Data will be available on the North Dakota State GIS Hub 2)Data will be available on the Internet through the Water Commission Internet Map Services

GLO & Survey Note Archival Efforts North Dakota State Water Commission Lee Krein – Registered Land Surveyor – Survey Notes/GLO Data Input - Integrity Supervision Rod Bassler – GIS Coordinator – Imaging / Spatial Data Development / Mapping Lead Chris Bader – IT Division Leader – Database / Internet Delivery Lead