What makes anyone think surveyors will have much to do with this?
Once the plat is filed, then it's going to be up to users to find where they are.
Where are the battalions of surveyors who will descend on these areas to mark up property?
It won't happen, it will be guys out there with their smart phones at the best.
With no ability to discern errors in the maps (and yes, I've seen official BLM plats with errors in lat/longs) this may be an epic cluster. Even if the plat is perfect do we want an I-phone staking it when the guy looking at it can't figure out how to make it read dms?
It's just a fantasy to think these areas will be marked or located by a surveyor. Even with perfectly executed plats it will be interesting. It's why monuments are set, even if they have blunders and errors, since they are original they hold. I can't see from the example why the township exterior is surveyed but the 4 momuments in the middle of it can't be set. Forget all the controlling corners, all that stuff is fed anyway.
Nate The Surveyor, post: 406160, member: 291 wrote: [USER=81]@A Harris[/USER] ,
If they set up calibration, or indexing stations, so that a surveyor can check himself, against a known point, this can be blunder checked, to HELP mitigate this many-faceted component.
Be careful with that word "IF" and some other words that represent a question mark. 😉
That word left my vocabulary the day I decided to be a surveyor because it did not define or represent anything except something "unknown".
Can't pull you a solid out of thin air. 😉
IN the past, I have been forced to sit down and be drilled with "What If" questions for an afternoon and I sat there having no answers to the two questioners and had to give them the lesson that you can not get a real answer without something real to work with. Their plan was for me to fail and basically, they failed to achieve their purpose and prove that I would sign another surveyors work. Neither could accept my answer "he got a license, let him sign it".
Now, will they set up their system with all the necessary components to do what they expect everyone to do?, that is something I hope they will do and perhaps what the whole real discussion is about.
In everything I've read, I have not seen anyone stepping up to fund such an endeavor from day one till forever.
My conclusion in my findings after following others is that "Most surveyors I know can operate RTK successfully and repeatedly. Not all their helpers that are using the RTK will". :bomb:
MightyMoe, post: 406168, member: 700 wrote: What makes anyone think surveyors will have much to do with this?
Once the plat is filed, then it's going to be up to users to find where they are.
Where are the battalions of surveyors who will descend on these areas to mark up property?It won't happen, it will be guys out there with their smart phones at the best.
With no ability to discern errors in the maps (and yes, I've seen official BLM plats with errors in lat/longs) this may be an epic cluster. Even if the plat is perfect do we want an I-phone staking it when the guy looking at it can't figure out how to make it read dms?It's just a fantasy to think these areas will be marked or located by a surveyor. Even with perfectly executed plats it will be interesting. It's why monuments are set, even if they have blunders and errors, since they are original they hold. I can't see from the example why the township exterior is surveyed but the 4 momuments in the middle of it can't be set. Forget all the controlling corners, all that stuff is fed anyway.
The land gets patented to State via the BLM's 'protraction survey'. After that any subsequent surveys will be required to be done under survey instructions from the State until that land leaves State ownership. That's when the additional expenses of doing the work get passed on to the next guy. No phone app is going to work here, there's no cellular coverage. Getting any kind of corrections is going to be a challenge, the savings the BLM proposes are just higher costs that they are passing along to the State and anyone following. This isn't a matter of precision measurements so much as unknown uncertainties associated with raising coordinates above monuments in the hierarchy of calls, the reverse of the PLSS system in the rest of the State and Nation. It's taking short cuts to save money and leaving the State and others responsible for the ramifications.
Just because I'm paranoid, doesn't mean they aren't out to get me.
Williwaw, post: 406175, member: 7066 wrote: ... It's taking short cuts to save money and leaving the State and others responsible for the ramifications.
No doubt. In the future I also see 'regionally specific' litigation and cases that are resolved outside the realm of current case law. Brave new world kids.
paden cash, post: 405885, member: 20 wrote: I would like to hear what Mr. Moistner has to offer on the subject.
He is probably in an entire different latitude, sucking up the sun and suds in South America or some other far off place...Jp
Kent McMillan, post: 405946, member: 3 wrote: Isn't the modern situation, though, that geodetic coordinates are more stable than monuments in many instances? Considering that the most valuable monuments are those that are both stable and accessible, it only makes sense to put the effort into establishing reference monuments that meet those criteria and spend the money saved on stabbing monuments into the tundra on something with greater long-term utility.
That is exactly why the coordinate-based township makes so much sense. When at some time in the future anyone needs to know within less than a meter or two where the boundaries of a tract are on the ground, then that tract can be located directly from the original evidence of the NSRS. The grossly inefficient solution would be to try to spend boatloads of federal money to mark every corner in a township with an uncertainty of +/-2cm only to discover that the long-term stability of the monuments was poor.
The beauty of a coordinate-based scheme is that it is efficient and durable. There's nothing to prevent a landowner from hiring a surveyor to mark the lines and corners of a tract at accuracies rangine from +/-1cm to +/-1m. The corner doesn't move if the surveyor makes a blunder and so all adjoining landowners's rights are secured.
If this land is to sell for more than half a million per section (hard to believe, but that's what the land values mentioned work out to), I'm sure that any landowner who wants to know exactly where every 100 ft. of the boundaries of his land are will be able to find a surveyor to tell him.
The problem one deals with in West Texas is (a) the original surveys were poorly documented, often containin purely fictitious calls, and what was actually surveyed was generally done without anything resembling great care. Neither of the conditions would apply to a modern coordinate-based township where the original record should be complete and the original survey without any significant errors. There just is no avoiding the advantages to the advancements in surveying technology that are most likely going to continue to develop.
Kent, the land values mentioned are rock bottom. Land is Alaska is much more valuable than West Texas. I don't think I've ever seen an entire section owned by one private person.
No one will need their coordinate marked land surveyed untill they want to subdivide it. When it's time to give junior his share of the 40 acres a subdivision plat will be required. The cost to do this will be jaw dropping.
Jp7191, post: 406183, member: 1617 wrote: He is probably in an entire different latitude, sucking up the sun and suds in South America or some other far off place...Jp
I believe the man of mystery is about to embark on another adventure to the Dark Continent.
Just because I'm paranoid, doesn't mean they aren't out to get me.
aliquot, post: 406191, member: 2486 wrote: Kent, the land values mentioned are rock bottom. Land is Alaska is much more valuable than West Texas. I don't think I've ever seen an entire section owned by one private person.
No one will need their coordinate marked land surveyed untill they want to subdivide it. When it's time to give junior his share of the 40 acres a subdivision plat will be required. The cost to do this will be jaw dropping.
So, does this mean that the land use is going to be mostly recreational where handheld GPS receivers will be adequate to the task of figuring out whose land to shoot animals on?
West Texas lands were largely appropriated in large blocks of contiguous surveys that were mainly platting operations with some minimal amount of work done on the ground to be able to plat the surveys in the County or District Surveyor's Office and on the map in the Texas GLO. The idea was that at some time in the future when the land was worth more than ten to twenty-five cents per acre, surveyors could, by compass and chain, actually locate all of the protracted corners described in the patents upon the ground.
Where it failed the test of time was that the original locations were often based upon sketchy or inaccurate knowledge of the relative positions of the senior grants in the vicinity of the blocks of surveys platted. That and leaving certain matters such as the locating/protracting surveyor's intentions the matter for future ouija boards to determine.
None of that would be present in the Alaska examples, though, right? The exercise would appear to simply be how to perpetuate the NSRS as used in the original protracted township plat and how to maintain the system of monuments shown uopn the township plat in ways that are most useful.
In the long term, is continued GNSS a given? A really far-sighted system would provide for the eventuality of funding cuts or adverse international situations that make sufficient satellite coverage unavailable to surveyors.
Monumenting every section and quarter corner would be ideal, but I doubt the funding will be there for that. So what is Plan B?
I would think at a minimum, township corners should be set, or if one is impractical, then sufficient monuments so that one never needs go more than 5 miles to the nearest monument to follow the protracted division. That's hugely cheaper than setting everything but gets something usable on the ground.
Monuments should still control, but having good coordinates is a big help. GNSS should be used only for relative positioning versus those monuments. Coordinates don't rule just as deed distances don't rule - you work off found monuments. That (mostly) solves the tectonic problems. Put a disclaimer on the coordinates that they are only to help locate points in relation to actual monumented corners and may change due to tectonic movement or datum updates. If someone uses a phone or recreational GNSS receiver to guess at their corners, that's no bigger problem than presently exists in much of the US with GIS maps. It happens, but they have no legal standing.
Side comment - why continue mile sections? In a wide-open new territory they should have gone metric from the start like the rest of the world does it. Metric is great-it's the mixing of systems that hurts.
My $0.00 (I can't charge for advice since I'm not licensed.)
Bill93, post: 406215, member: 87 wrote: In the long term, is continued GNSS a given? A really far-sighted system would provide for the eventuality of funding cuts or adverse international situations that make sufficient satellite coverage unavailable to surveyors.
Biill, I'd think that Isaac Asimov has already dealt with this future situation you describe in which some necessary technology is no longer maintained. Wouldn't the adjoining landowners locate their common boundaries by some other means in that scenario? It wouldn't matter particularly whether those boundaries were consistent with what the various Surveyor-Saints described in the remote past as long as the result seemed true to the participants as a matter of faith, right?
Really, a future in which precise positioning of points in the remote Alaskan wilderness cannot be done is almost certainly a future in which those same lands are as worthless as they surely seem now from the rest of the US.
Paul in PA, post: 406148, member: 236 wrote: If you are not ready for this then please throw away you GNSS receivers and precise total stations, as you are not ready for surveying.
Paul in PA
Paul,
I'm not sure what you are saying here - Not ready for what?
- Tectonic movement prediction?
- Seismic movement prediction?
- Abandoning the highest form of boundary evidence in favor of the lowest form of boundary evidence?
- The cost of attorneys (tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars) establishing what constitutes original monumentation so that a boundary dispute case can be argued under the existing body of law?
- Getting a new boundary law book and taking some courses on how to deal with a separate PLSS system (after they are published/developed)?
- Landowners constructing improvements near boundaries they "established" with an iPhone 7 (I'm not including the iPhone 8 - I hear it's really good)?
- Abandoning the proven system of Public Lands Surveys that has evolved over 200 years to provide a predictable and reliable framework for boundaries in the PLSS states?
I don't really want to throw any of my equipment away - I hope that when you say "ready for this" you are talking about being ready for establishing a coordinate at a point in space - you bet I'm ready for that - do it on a regular basis. I even take it one step further and plant a monument.
I plant the mon for a couple of reasons - to protect the position that I established and to make it easy for others to replicate my work - this saves everyone money in the long run.
JKinAK, post: 406234, member: 7219 wrote: Paul,
- Tectonic movement prediction?
- Seismic movement prediction?
- Abandoning the highest form of boundary evidence in favor of the lowest form of boundary evidence?
- The cost of attorneys (tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars) establishing what constitutes original monumentation so that a boundary dispute case can be argued under the existing body of law?
- Getting a new boundary law book and taking some courses on how to deal with a separate PLSS system (after they are published/developed)?
- Landowners constructing improvements near boundaries they "established" with an iPhone 7 (I'm not including the iPhone 8 - I hear it's really good)?
- Abandoning the proven system of Public Lands Surveys that has evolved over 200 years to provide a predictable and reliable framework for boundaries in the PLSS states?
Realistically, it's unlikely that we'll have to deal with any of these issues. The state seems to recognize these shortcomings and they won't convey any land until it's monumented. The end user/land owner will have to pay that cost. So the BLM will have simply transferred the cost from the Feds to the state. And the state will have transferred it to the end user/land owner. And that extra cost will impede use and development - which is counter to what the whole PLSS was established for - to facilitate the progress and development of the lands of the US so that they could generate income.
DPPS isn't new or modern or innovative or cost effective: In the long run it's simply the Federal Gov't attempting to abandon their legal responsibility so that the little guy foots the bill.
JKinAK, post: 406234, member: 7219 wrote: Paul,
I'm not sure what you are saying here - Not ready for what?
- Tectonic movement prediction?
- Seismic movement prediction?
- Abandoning the highest form of boundary evidence in favor of the lowest form of boundary evidence?
- The cost of attorneys (tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars) establishing what constitutes original monumentation so that a boundary dispute case can be argued under the existing body of law?
- Getting a new boundary law book and taking some courses on how to deal with a separate PLSS system (after they are published/developed)?
- Landowners constructing improvements near boundaries they "established" with an iPhone 7 (I'm not including the iPhone 8 - I hear it's really good)?
- Abandoning the proven system of Public Lands Surveys that has evolved over 200 years to provide a predictable and reliable framework for boundaries in the PLSS states?I don't really want to throw any of my equipment away - I hope that when you say "ready for this" you are talking about being ready for establishing a coordinate at a point in space - you bet I'm ready for that - do it on a regular basis. I even take it one step further and plant a monument.
I plant the mon for a couple of reasons - to protect the position that I established and to make it easy for others to replicate my work - this saves everyone money in the long run.
My sarcastic response was to Bob Keiner "Put me down on the "this is not ready for prime-time" side. Protraction 2.0, as I like to call it..."
I should have considered that he may not have followed my original premise which was minimal monumentation that was occupiable for future GPS survey work. My alternate Township corner monuments would give every township two monumented corners which were within 6 miles of any interior corner. Having a coordinate record starting with those two corners any local movement will have a chain of movement records. I never implied or thought that the original coordinate values would be good forever.
Paul in PA
Williwaw, post: 406175, member: 7066 wrote: The land gets patented to State via the BLM's 'protraction survey'. After that any subsequent surveys will be required to be done under survey instructions from the State until that land leaves State ownership. That's when the additional expenses of doing the work get passed on to the next guy. No phone app is going to work here, there's no cellular coverage. Getting any kind of corrections is going to be a challenge, the savings the BLM proposes are just higher costs that they are passing along to the State and anyone following. This isn't a matter of precision measurements so much as unknown uncertainties associated with raising coordinates above monuments in the hierarchy of calls, the reverse of the PLSS system in the rest of the State and Nation. It's taking short cuts to save money and leaving the State and others responsible for the ramifications.
Is there a State surveying department, or a way of funding this? There sure isn't in my state, I can't recall the state ever PAYING to have corners or lines marked for any reason beyond DOT surveys.
As an aside there was a group that "staked" state lines using "precise" methods, a bunch of clueless guys with hand helds and a laptop with GIS lines. Often the lines looked like fish swimming upstream. This was a user group that was "authorized" to do the surveys by the state leg. (they did pay for the signs and metal fence posts). The good thing was I got some work out of it pulling up their stakes and marking the actual lines when it was clear something didn't look right.
As far as smart phones I'm just talking about GPS on them not cell connections, which would also include other hand helds.
One of the examples in the thread shows a NE4 of a section in the middle of a township that needs to be patented and the implication is that all controlling corners through the township need to be monumented to set the 4 corners for the patent. This is of course the procedure that is normally followed. After surveying the entire township exterior why not just monument those 4 corners, seems silly to go through all that, have crews in the area and not stake those corners at least. The BLM always wants to also set the controlling corners, but if they aren't setting anything at all might as well set the 4 for the patent and forget all the others since the controlling corners only mark Fed land. Treat the NE4 more like a HES parcel.
Anyway, good luck, if it goes much like what I've seen it may get interesting. Hopefully it will keep some private surveyors busy for a long time. I'm all for that!!!:cool:
JKinAK, post: 406235, member: 7219 wrote: Realistically, it's unlikely that we'll have to deal with any of these issues. The state seems to recognize these shortcomings and they won't convey any land until it's monumented. The end user/land owner will have to pay that cost. So the BLM will have simply transferred the cost from the Feds to the state. And the state will have transferred it to the end user/land owner. And that extra cost will impede use and development - which is counter to what the whole PLSS was established for - to facilitate the progress and development of the lands of the US so that they could generate income.
DPPS isn't new or modern or innovative or cost effective: In the long run it's simply the Federal Gov't attempting to abandon their legal responsibility so that the little guy foots the bill.
So, if the land isn't to be sold in section-sized units. Does that mean that 1/4 sections are also unlikely? Section 6(g) of the Alaska Statehood Act under which the United States is obligated to issued patents to lands selected by Alaska states that the minimum size of a tract is equivalent to 9 sections, which I take to mean that there is no way around either Alaska or subsequent purchasers having to do further surveying if the boundaries of tracts 160 acres or less in size are to be marked. The United States would not appear to be obligated to either perform or pay for those surveys.
If it is a given that Alaska or future purchasers will have to have sureys made either when the land is sold by Alaska or afterwards, why isn't the important question what will facilitate that and why on Earth isn't the coordinate-based township the ideal means of facilitating exactly those surveys? Is it really going to be the end of the world if some Alaska surveyor stabs a marker a decimeter away from the true position of any corner? If so, will this be a first in rural Alaska surveying?
Even if those nine-section blocks of Alaskan wilderness were transferred with only the outside boundaries marked as described in the Act, virtually all of the corners of tracts that Alaska might hope to sell within the blocks would remain protracted. In what way is a protracted corner in that scheme that gets later monumented a decimeter away from its theoretical position any different than one that is monumented a decimeter away from the true coordinated position? Functionally, they are the same issue, aren't they?
As a technical issue, I wonder what sort of accuracies are possible with SBAS and GNSS in rural Alaska. Is subdecimeter positioning possible? If so, and if decimeter errors are perfectly tolerable, then that is a further argument in favor of the coordinate-based townships contemplated.
Kent McMillan, post: 406205, member: 3 wrote: So, does this mean that the land use is going to be mostly recreational where handheld GPS receivers will be adequate to the task of figuring out whose land to shoot animals on?
West Texas lands were largely appropriated in large blocks of contiguous surveys that were mainly platting operations with some minimal amount of work done on the ground to be able to plat the surveys in the County or District Surveyor's Office and on the map in the Texas GLO. The idea was that at some time in the future when the land was worth more than ten to twenty-five cents per acre, surveyors could, by compass and chain, actually locate all of the protracted corners described in the patents upon the ground.
Where it failed the test of time was that the original locations were often based upon sketchy or inaccurate knowledge of the relative positions of the senior grants in the vicinity of the blocks of surveys platted. That and leaving certain matters such as the locating/protracting surveyor's intentions the matter for future ouija boards to determine.
None of that would be present in the Alaska examples, though, right? The exercise would appear to simply be how to perpetuate the NSRS as used in the original protracted township plat and how to maintain the system of monuments shown uopn the township plat in ways that are most useful.
In Alaska almost all hunting is on public land. Remote private land is used to build a cabin and a landing strip. The parcels are relatively small and are usually completely surrounded by public land, either managed BLM, DNR or a Bourough. There is no reason to purchase land to hunt on.
Recreational grade GPS accuracies are adequate for most uses until they aren't. I have no doubt the new system will work, the reason this is so controversial is not the technical difficulties. It is that the expenses that were paid for by the federal government in all the other states are now being passed on to the State of Alaska.
MightyMoe, post: 406241, member: 700 wrote: Is there a State surveying department, or a way of funding this? There sure isn't in my state, I can't recall the state ever PAYING to have corners or lines marked for any reason beyond DOT surveys.
As an aside there was a group that "staked" state lines using "precise" methods, a bunch of clueless guys with hand helds and a laptop with GIS lines. Often the lines looked like fish swimming upstream. This was a user group that was "authorized" to do the surveys by the state leg. (they did pay for the signs and metal fence posts). The good thing was I got some work out of it pulling up their stakes and marking the actual lines when it was clear something didn't look right.
As far as smart phones I'm just talking about GPS on them not cell connections, which would also include other hand helds.
One of the examples in the thread shows a NE4 of a section in the middle of a township that needs to be patented and the implication is that all controlling corners through the township need to be monumented to set the 4 corners for the patent. This is of course the procedure that is normally followed. After surveying the entire township exterior why not just monument those 4 corners, seems silly to go through all that, have crews in the area and not stake those corners at least. The BLM always wants to also set the controlling corners, but if they aren't setting anything at all might as well set the 4 for the patent and forget all the others since the controlling corners only mark Fed land. Treat the NE4 more like a HES parcel.
Anyway, good luck, if it goes much like what I've seen it may get interesting. Hopefully it will keep some private surveyors busy for a long time. I'm all for that!!!:cool:
Yes, the Department of Natural Resources has a surveying department. They don't actually preform most surveys of state land, but they issue very detailed surveying instructions to contract surveyors and review and approve all surveys of state land. They also serve as the platting authority for the unorganized bourough (all areas of the state with no local government).
As for paying for this... The State of Alaska is currently experiencing a severe budget problem so I don't think any large scale surveys of State land will be happening anytime soon.
aliquot, post: 406272, member: 2486 wrote: In Alaska almost all hunting is on public land. Remote private land is used to build a cabin and a landing strip. The parcels are relatively small and are usually completely surrounded by public land, either managed BLM, DNR or a Bourough. There is no reason to purchase land to hunt on.
Okay, so the size of the parcels is such that the United States is under no obligation to survey any of them, so the real problem is that the State of Alaska probably rationally recognizes that the cost of surveying tracts for cabins accessible only by air is going to be a huge expense in relation to the value of the land.
If the cost of the survey is such that no purchaser will be able to afford to have a tract surveyed and marked, isn't the choice between (a) selling these small recreational tracts and (b) not selling them?
Back in the 60s land in my hometown was 200 to 400 an acre. Mom sold the last few acres in the early 90s for 95k an acre. She got ripped off.
The PLSS was developed to create a defensible fabric for the disposal of lands. It has a well built legal foundation. Replacing it with a purely measurement based system is shortsighted at best. The fact that it is being considered validates the rantings of the falling skies of expert measurers being licensed as actual Surveyors..
" I have no doubt the new system will work, the reason this is so controversial is not the technical difficulties. It is that the expenses that were paid for by the federal government in all the other states are now being passed on to the State of Alaska."
"in all the other states" Excuse me, the Federal government did not pay a dime for any surveying in the Colonial States. And in fact the original colonies were the sole source of funding as the government began surveying he West.
For the PLSS states the system was set up to allow for fast surveying to a minimal tolerance, expecting monuments (right or wrong) to be set and to be held for the record. The Midwest was well traveled by indigenous people and others well before the surveyors showed up. Much of Alaska is sill more remote today than the West was 200 years ago. Don' want to fly in? Don't expect me to build you an interstate to nowhere. Get a horse, mule, reindeer, yak or sled dogs, but this is the frontier, love it as it is or leave it alone.
Using the most modern of equipment would not get the same job done within a time equivalent of the PLSS heydays. Alaska is not conducive to the plethora of checkerboard fields I see as I fly across the US. It is necessary to rethink what has to be done for the expected economic uses of the next 100 years.
Paul in PA