Surveyors And The

Cadastral Data Content Standard

- Part Two -

Montana Cadastral Mapping Project

General Information
Crosswalk To The Cadastral Data Content Standard
County Examples

General Information

The Montana Cadastral Mapping Project is a public-private sector partnership to create, maintain, and disseminate a digital GIS land ownership cadastral database of the entire state.

The goal of the Project is to create and maintain a continuous and consistent digital data set representing all parcels in the State of Montana. The statewide digital land ownership database is created from PLSS coordinates and legal land descriptions obtained from three sources:

BLM Geographic Coordinate Data Base (GCDB). The GCDB holds locational information (x/y coordinates) of all section, quarter section, and quarter-quarter section corners, by township. Coverage for Montana is expected to be complete in 2000.
The Montana Department of Revenue Computer Assisted Mass Appraisal System (CAMA) database. CAMA is a text based database of all taxable (and some tax-exempt) lands in the State of Montana. It has four 30-character text fields for legal land descriptions of property.
Private research which gathers deeds, certificates of survey, and paper maps from county courthouses for those areas which are not covered by the GDCB and Montana Department of Revenue information.

Integrating GCDB and CAMA information to produce digital land ownership parcels is accomplished by a series of programs known as the Montana Automated Parcel Program (MAPP), created at the State Of Montana GIS Services Section. MAPP facilitates the production of digital land ownership parcels so that land ownership within the State, both private and public, is mapped in digital format with an associated geocode.

To make the data available to the public, the Montana Cadastral Mapping Project hosts a web site which describes the project in detail, and provides ftp access to township files as ARC/INFO .e00 files and as shape files.

The State partners with several counties in Montana to incorporate private survey data, and in one county to use their control data to enhance the GCDB. See the county examples, below.

Crosswalk of Montana Cadastral Mapping Project Data To The Cadastral Data Content Standard

The left column of the table below contains a list of some of the survey related information and cadastral data used in the Montana Cadastral Mapping Project.

The right column contains the Cadastral Data Content Standard entity and attribute which corresponds to the information in the left column.

Overall, the table lists a potential of fifteen elements of the Montana Cadastral Mapping Project which correspond directly with the FGDC Cadastral Data Content Standard. This represents fifteen links, key terms, or relate items --- in other words, a wealth of capability to work with standardized definitions and to use these definitions as understandable links between multiple agencies and varying databases.

Montana Cadastral Mapping Project Data	Cadastral Data Content Standard Entity/Attribute
GCDB section corner	Public Land Survey System Township First Division/First Division Type Corner Point Measured Coordinate/X Coordinate Corner Point Measured Coordinate/Y Coordinate
GCDB quarter section corner	Public Land Survey System Township Second Division/Second Division Type Corner Point Measured Coordinate/X Coordinate Corner Point Measured Coordinate/Y Coordinate
GCDB quarter-quarter section corner	Public Land Survey System Township Second Division/Second Division Type Corner Point Measured Coordinate/X Coordinate Corner Point Measured Coordinate/Y Coordinate
original survey bearing⁽¹⁾	Straight Line/Direction Value
original survey distance⁽¹⁾	Straight Line/Distance Value
Section Number	PLSS Township First Division/Designator
Parcel	PLSS Township Third Division/Third Division Type
Public Ownership, such as Forest Service, State, BLM, National Park Service, etc.	Public Agency/Public Agency Name
Control Points (from retracements)	Legal Area Corner/Controlling
Bearings (from retracements)	Straight Line/Direction Value
Distances (from retracements)	Straight Line/Distance Value
Legal Descriptions of private taxable parcels, e.g. SW4NW4	Legal Area Description⁽²⁾
Deeds (from County records)	n/a
Certificate of Survey (from County records)	n/a
Paper maps (from County records)	n/a

Notes:
⁽¹⁾ Original bearings and distances are not explicitly stored in the Montana data, but are considered to be original sources which were used for determining GCDB coordinates --- information which is subject to mathematical correction or updates based on new control points and retracement.
⁽²⁾ Though the Standard's Legal Area Description entity does not provide explicitly for legal descriptions, it does provide the structure for assembling the components of a single legal description into one.

County Examples

Broadwater County
Flathead County

Thanks to the following people for providing information related to the Montana examples: Mark Dixon - BLM Montana State Office, Rick Breckenridge - Flathead County, Stuart Kirkpatrick - State Of Montana, Craig Bacino - State Of Montana, and Bob Holliday - State Of Montana.

Back To Part Two - Examples of Automated and On-line Surveying Information

Table Of Contents - Surveryors and the Cadastral Data Content Standard

Links to the other Cadastral Courses:
Learning The Cadastral Data Content Standard
County Recorders And The Cadastral Data Content Standard
Cadastral Information for GIS Specialists

Presented by the United States Department of the Interior Bureau of Land Management, and

the Federal Geographic Data Committee Cadastral Subcommittee