Texas Railroad Commission GIS - Survey Lines

Most likely they took the record data (paper) and like a deed staker did the math and plotted it into the GIS. This has been done to the parcel layer almost everywhere. There is a future intent to get the data accurate but that costs money and will require surveys and probably a lot of adjudication. So until and when the budget is approved to do the work what you got is just what the disclaimer states, an approximation and usually not that good of one.

The GIS technology is capable of precisely keeping the data right down to the pin prick of your punch marks. But data like that cost money and requires real on the ground work. I'm not holding my breath waiting for that to happen. If you do you'll die a thousand deaths.

On top of all that surveyors been fighting the GIS instead of getting in and getting it fixed and done right. I suspect that by the time surveyors decide to jump on board the work will have been given to some other group.

If the tendency to hold the record (paper) over the ground truth and boundary establishment finally wins out you won't need to do the ground surveying. The boundaries will just be forced to where the GIS has shown them. That's the cheap truth of the matter. A few landowners will go to court at much expense and retain their true boundaries. Everyone else will just acquiesce to the GIS after twenty years or so (no need for an expensive survey). If you hate fence line surveying you're about to find out that was a pleasant walk in the park to what GIS is going to go to boundaries.

I have viewed their site, it reminds me of most any GIS site.

1 The info shown is gathered from information based upon a budget and time

2 Whatever if free and available is used

3 That information is cross checked when the budget or time allows, that equals rarely

4 Most of the information is best viewed for accuracy against a background of Google Earth or other current photo source

5 I have been contacted by them after sending in a well site to verify what I have found on the ground because their GIS shows something different.

6 They may have different people contact for another verification and finally will accept the new info

7 I do not know if they update their info based on what I have shown, the Location of the well is shown as I have found it to be and they accept where I have shown HR boundaries

I do know a specialist in getting permits thru their office, I do not know if she will be able to help.

Will send her your comments and see if she wants to pursue and answer that particular question.

0.02

> 5 I have been contacted by them after sending in a well site to verify what I have found on the ground because their GIS shows something different.
>
> 6 They may have different people contact for another verification and finally will accept the new info
>
> 7 I do not know if they update their info based on what I have shown, the Location of the well is shown as I have found it to be and they accept where I have shown HR boundaries

That's good information. In the case I'm dealing with there is a non-existent pseudo-vacancy shown on the GLO GIS that is repeated in the Railroad Commission GIS. The gap can easily be shown not to exist just from records on file at the GLO. It's an artifact of a crummy compilation of the GLO Official County Map in 1916 that was held over in the 1976 County Map just to see what sort of a mess it would make, I guess.

GLO GIS Image

I'm just trying to figure out what the most practical solution to this problem is likely to be, the practical problem being getting a drilling permit on the basis of the gap not actually existing, as it in fact does not. If major errors in the TxRRC GIS mapping can be resolved at the permitting level, then that sounds like the path of least resistance to me.

Kent:

There are several original land survey line databases available. Many oil companies have
their own for certain oil plays and are usually very accurate. Publicly available are:

GLO Generated from digitizing their own 1” = 2000 vara maps

TNRIS Generated from some digitizing and some aerial photography

TX RRC Generated from USGS 7.5’ quadrangle maps

As far as accuracy (my own anecdotal experienced):

GLO 0 to 200 feet, average – 20 to 50 feet

TNRIS 0 to 100 feet, average – 50 feet

TX RRC 0 to 100 feet, average – 50+ feet

Tobin has a state-wide contract with the GLO to improve the OLS database. Tobin is usually accurate
with their own database – 10 feet to 20 feet. Average cost per county is $5000.

Midland Maps has an OLS database for about $75 per county.

A company in McAllen has an OTS database but only sells the OTS on top of Google Express Maps.
They do not sell the database in an electronic form – I am sure they have one.

There are several companies who have contract with county tax assessors. I have not found their
maps to very accurate – only more detailed than OTS maps.

Many surveyors in Texas use Google Maps to prepare location maps and estimates. I use the
GLO, TNRIS, and TX RRC lines overlaid on Google Maps Express. Using this technique, you can
resolve most dotted lines on the GLO paper maps. You might be amazed at all of the
junior abstract lines that have controlled senior surveys.

> There are several original land survey line databases available. Many oil companies have their own for certain oil plays and are usually very accurate. Publicly available are:
>
> GLO Generated from digitizing their own 1” = 2000 vara maps
>
> TNRIS Generated from some digitizing and some aerial photography
>
> TX RRC Generated from USGS 7.5’ quadrangle maps
>
> As far as accuracy (my own anecdotal experienced):
>
> GLO 0 to 200 feet, average – 20 to 50 feet
>
> TNRIS 0 to 100 feet, average – 50 feet
>
> TX RRC 0 to 100 feet, average – 50+ feet

Actually, this is a case that completely blows those accuracies out of the water. The spatial errors on the GLO and TX RRC maps are more than 2000 ft. over one roughly 12-square-mile part of the map. An entire patented survey is missing - not merely erroneously shown in conflict, but missing completely. I haven't examined the TNRIS survey lines dataset, but have to doubt it is any better since the official GLO maps would have provided the basis for that compilation as well, I'd almost have to think.

When you digitize a map that itself has such gross errors, it's to be expected that you end up with such junk. What is notable is that the errors seem as a practical matter to be nearly frozen in place because of the seeming difficulty of correcting the source mapping.

It would be interesting to see whether *any* of the commercial databases show the survey that is missing on the GLO and TxRRC maps and GIS.

Google Earth Express generally is more accurate than Google Map. I would not
go on the record as saying any of Google's products are accurate. The
question was asked here a few months ago and the response was five to fifty feet.

I had a project in Reagan County to tighten up the OTS and overlay it on top
on Google Maps Express. There were some huge gaps and overlaps in the
aerial photo panels from Google. I separated the panels and re-edge matched
using Microsoft Ice. Accuracies went from 100+/- to about 10'.

BTW, Google Earth uses the TNRIS photography for most of the rural land base in Texas.

Mr. Harris:

Certain people in the TX RRC (as you know, keeps track of well locations), claim
to revise their OTS based on GPS locations. Texas is a big state; I have not come
across any revisions myself. Maybe some day I will cross the TX RRC path.

> There are several original land survey line databases available.

To be precise, I would be interested to know whether *any* GIS database even remotely correctly shows that part of Dimmit County along the Zavala County line between Carrizo Springs and Crystal City that would look like this if compiled from GLO records.

Revised GLO County Map

I'm thinking that this is an excellent example of why it is always a good idea to examine the GLO files in an area if original land grant lines are to be drawn on a map.

> Google Earth Express generally is more accurate than Google Map. I would not
> go on the record as saying any of Google's products are accurate. The
> question was asked here a few months ago and the response was five to fifty feet.

We may be discussing two different things. I'm not terribly concerned about the accuracy of the satellite imagery in the GLO or TxRRC GIS. I can buy commercial satellite imagery from terraserver.com that is generally excellent. The issue that I have in mind is the correctness of how the original land grant lines are compiled in the GIS. This means both spatial accuracy and consistency with the records from which the compilation was made.

There are definite differences between GLO and TX RRC OTS.

Are you using terracon to declare the GLO is erroneous?

Do you have any recent survey maps in the area?

> There are definite differences between GLO and TX RRC OTS.
>
> Are you using terracon to declare the GLO is erroneous?
>
> Do you have any recent survey maps in the area?

All it takes to identify the GLO compilation as incorrect is actually reading the field notes on file for the surveys shown on my corrected version, all of which have been patented.

The GLO map was compiled by wrongly holding a call for adjoiner made that would tie the Southwest corner of the Henry Castro Survey to the Northwest corner of the senior Stewart Newell Survey if it had not been made by mistake and in ignorance of the true position of the Newell Survey.

The GLO files contain ample evidence that the adjoiner call was completely mistaken and that the Southwest corner of the Castro wasn't originally located within even 0.4 miles of the Northwest corner of the Newell.

Most of the surveys shown on the GLO map, including the Kirchner and Castro, were originally located by the same surveyor in 1874 and so are parts of a single system. When the twenty or so surveys in that 1874 system are plotted out, you can see by where the surveyor called for corners he had made with bearing trees and with lines connecting them reciting passing calls for well known creeks and other topo features where his survey was actually run upon the ground. I've examined his original field book and have confirmed that it shows that he actually ran certain lines and described others by protraction from his traverse.

In the case of the mistaken adjoiner call, there is even the affidavit of the surveyor who made that call that he never found the corner of the senior survey, which is about as good as it gets in showing that the adjoiner call has zero weight in light of where the original surveyor is known to have actually run lines and marked corners. You'll find the principle discussed in State v. Sullivan (92 S.W.2d 228; 127 Tex 525; 1936)

There is a fairly long record of resurveys into the 20th century that can be compared with where a person would place the surveys from their field notes and calls for natural features that appear on the USGS 7.5-minute quad, such as the locations of Peña Creek, Rocky Creek, Espantoso Lake, and a few roads, which also show the 1874 surveys to be in hugely different positions than are shown in the GLO and TxRRC GIS mapping.

In the end, there is a mountain of evidence spread across many files at the GLO showing the GLO GIS and Official County Map are just grossly wrong in this vicinity. By "grossly", I mean patented surveys are missing and the locations of survey lines that are plotted are in error by more than 2000 ft. in relation to where they really are on the ground.

Kent-

Your posted situation is not common enough here for my simple mind to understand totally.

With your ? of:

survey lines that are plotted are in error by more than 2000 ft. in relation to where they really are on the ground.

The one salient question I might proffer is:

" Can you find any digital imagery that would assist you to find out who/what could be better understood by the GIS mappers ? "

Cheers,

Derek

> Your posted situation is not common enough here for my simple mind to understand totally.

Derek, probably what is throwing you is the fact that the land use in that area has been as ranches, all of them enclosing many original land grants and with the original land grant lines not being perpetuated by changes in land use that show up on aerial imagery. Some of the ranch tracts were later resubdivided and a new pattern of fences and land uses that belongs to those resudivisions is the dominant feature in aerial imagery.

So the exercise of plotting up the original surveys from 1874 consists of going back to the basics of:

a) plotting up the surveys and the passing calls for identifiable topo features they give, using the record of the original survey from 1874 (in the case of the Kirchner, Garrels, Castro, Schmidt, and other surveys located contemporaneously by the same surveyor,

b) overlaying that plot on aerial topographic maps such as the USGS 7.5-minute quadrangle maps or on satellite imagery,

c) adjusting the plot for the systematic chaining errors that a long list of resurveys have reported in the 1874 work,

d) registering the plot using the record of later resurveys to connect particular corners to photoidentifiable features such as roads and fences, and

e) examining the result.

The exercise is, in short, one of surveying research and application of appropriate principles of law, such as the rejection of calls for adjoiner that can be shown to be mistaken and greatly inconsistent with the rest of the surveyor's location of the boundary more definitely set out in the description giving the adjoiner call.

The obvious error in the GIS can be easily shown simply by pointing out that one entire original grant to which the State of Texas has issued a patent is not shown or indicated in any way on the GIS map and another the East-West width of the blank space on the GIS has nearly entirely disappeared in the process of leaving the blank space. The correction of the map is an exercise for a surveyor since it requires a more sophisticated understanding of the entire history of the surveys in that area than any GISer is likely to have an interest in having.

Compare my correction to the Dimmit County Map shown above to the 1916 version published by the GLO that apparently provides the source of the mistake on the present version and in both the GLO and TxRRC GIS mapping:

Along the Nueces River in LaSalle County, Texas, there are many north-south survey
lines that called for the Nueces River but mistakenly stopped at a draw. I would imagine
this would happen often when original patents were surveyed during dry season.

The GLO supposedly knows the endpoint of the '30-foot average width' on all of the rivers
in south Texas. Call them up and they will tell you the state plane coordinate of those
particular points. In an upcoming field seminar in Concan, Texas, the LSLS instructors
are going to determine gradient boundaries. Last time I checked, the point of navagability
on the Frio River was way east of Concan and I-35. BTW, this point is important to pipeline
surveyors to know if the State of Texas or private interests will be involved in river
crossings.

I was once told by a senior GLO official (not a surveyor) that if the GIS (GLO or otherwise)
used precise GPS coordinates, the oil companies would quit using RPLS to do their
surveying and we would have a mess. After course, the TX RRC does not require
T-4 well location plats to be signed by a RPLS.

> Along the Nueces River in LaSalle County, Texas, there are many north-south survey
> lines that called for the Nueces River but mistakenly stopped at a draw. I would imagine
> this would happen often when original patents were surveyed during dry season.

In the case I'm describing, the passing calls are on well known creeks and the lines actually run by the locating surveyor continue across the creek. There is only one place I've found where the creek had two channels, one relict and described as a "slough" in 1874 but now apparently the flowing channel with the other relict.

There is no reasonable possibility that the original surveyor mistook Peña Creek for anything else since his footsteps fit the actual creek quite well and he was running a stair-step traverse that followed the creek to locate lands along it, crossing and recrossing the same creek many times along his traverse.

> I was once told by a senior GLO official (not a surveyor) that if the GIS (GLO or otherwise)
> used precise GPS coordinates ...

As if that could actually happen. There aren't enough sufficiently capable surveyors in Texas to ever get that done or landowners with the means to pay for it. I would just like to see a GIS that even remotely resembles the actual shapes and locations of the original surveys and that doesn't merely spin off more problems than presently exist by perpetuating gross errors.

There are no maps that accurately reflect the facts on the ground, except the ones that are actually SURVEYED on the ground and held privately. All of the base maps are the result of rubber-sheeting over USGS maps and the like.
Some of the survey lies from the GLO website can be off by several hundred feet. This GIS stuff is some parts of the USA may be kinda close, but thats not been my experience in Texas.

> Some of the survey lies from the GLO website can be off by several hundred feet.

Actually, in this case the survey lines on the GLO GIS in the area North of the Newell Survey (shown in the image previously posted) are off by more than 2000 ft. What is remarkable is that most of the information needed to repair the map is actually contained in the files at the GLO. No field work is necessary to make a huge improvement in the spatial accuracy of the survey lines layer. However, that information isn't in any one file with a gold star on it. It takes actually examining the entire file for about forty files to put the picture together.

I would imagine a technician digitizing thousands of abstract lines does not really
care about a few hundred feet here or there.

There are approximately 330,000 abstracts and scrap files in Texas.