Cadastral surveying is the sub-field of cadastre and surveying that specialises in the establishment and re-establishment of real property boundaries. It involves the physical delineation of property boundaries and determination of dimensions, areas and certain rights associated with properties. This is regardless of whether they are on land, water or defined by natural or artificial features. [1] It is an important component of the legal creation of properties. A cadastral surveyor must apply both the spatial-measurement principles of general surveying and legal principles such as respect of neighboring titles.
One of the primary roles of the land surveyor is to determine the boundary of real property on the ground. That boundary has already been established and described in legal documents and official plans and maps prepared by attorneys, engineers, and other land surveyors. The corners of the property will either have been monumented by a prior surveyor, or monumented by the surveyor hired to perform a survey of a new boundary which has been agreed upon by adjoining landowners.
A common use of a survey is to determine an existing legal property boundary. The first stage in such a survey, known as a resurvey, is to obtain copies of the deed description and all other available documents. The deed description is from a deed and not a tax statement or other incomplete document. The surveyor would also obtain copies of deed descriptions and maps of the adjoining properties, any records from the municipality or county, utility maps, and any records of surveys. Depending on which region the survey is located in, records may be incomplete or difficult to find. A thorough search is important so that no records are overlooked. Copies of deeds are usually in the government recorder's office, and maps or plats can usually be found at the recorder or surveyor's office. These arrangements will vary state-to-state and survey-system-to-survey system, so local familiarity is important.
When all the records are assembled, the surveyor examines the documents for errors, such as closure errors. When a metes and bounds description is involved, the seniority of the deeds must be determined. The title abstract may provide the order of seniority for the deeds related to the tract being surveyed. After this data is gathered and analyzed, the field survey may commence. The initial survey operations are concentrated on locating monuments. Property corners may be marked by iron pins, metal survey markers, iron pipes, and other features possibly establishing a line of possession will be located. When the approximate positions for the boundaries of the property have been located, a traverse is run around the property. While the control traverse is being run, ties will be measured and all details relevant to the boundaries will be acquired. This includes but is not limited to locating the property corners, monuments, fences, hedge rows, walls, walks, and buildings on the lot. The surveyor then takes this collected data and compares it to the records which were received. When a solution is reached, the chosen property corners (those that best fit all the data) are coordinated, and ties by direction and distance are computed from the nearest traverse point. Once this has been established the features on the lot can be drawn, dimensions can be shown from these features to the boundary line, and a map or plat is prepared for the client. [2]
Cadastral survey monuments can be either natural or artificial. Natural monuments are things such as trees, large stones, and other substantial, naturally occurring objects that were in place before the survey was made and are very unlikely to be moved. An artificial monument is anything that (within local surveying regulations) serves to mark a property boundary—having been placed by landowners, surveyors, engineers, or others. They have included (but are not necessarily limited to) iron pins or pipes, stakes, and concrete monuments. US courts have held that natural monuments take precedence over artificial monuments, because they are more certain in identification and less likely to be disturbed. [3]
Over time, construction and maintenance of roads and many other human acts, along with acts of nature such as earthquakes, movement of water, and tectonic shift, can obliterate or damage the monumented locations of land boundaries. The land surveyor is often compelled to consider other evidence such as fence locations, wood lines, monuments on neighboring properties, and people's recollections. These other forms of evidence are known as extrinsic evidence, and are fairly commonly used. Extrinsic evidence is defined as evidence outside the writings, in this case evidence outside of the deed. Extrinsic evidence has been held to be of equal value to evidence from another source. [4]
A land surveyor sets monuments at actual physical points on the ground that define angle points of boundary lines dividing neighboring land parcels. These monuments may be iron rebar rods or pipes, but they vary by local regulations. Rods or pipes may have an affixed plastic cap over the top bearing the responsible surveyor's name and license number. Older monuments may exist such as old pipes, gun barrels, axles, mounds of stone, whiskey bottles, or even wooden stakes. In addition to rods and pipes, surveyors might use 4 inch × 4 inch concrete posts at the corners of large parcels or anywhere which requires greater stability (e.g. beach sand).[ citation needed ]
Surveying or land surveying is the technique, profession, art, and science of determining the terrestrial two-dimensional or three-dimensional positions of points and the distances and angles between them. These points are usually on the surface of the Earth, and they are often used to establish maps and boundaries for ownership, locations, such as the designated positions of structural components for construction or the surface location of subsurface features, or other purposes required by government or civil law, such as property sales.
The Public Land Survey System (PLSS) is the surveying method developed and used in the United States to plat, or divide, real property for sale and settling. Also known as the Rectangular Survey System, it was created by the Land Ordinance of 1785 to survey land ceded to the United States by the Treaty of Paris in 1783, following the end of the American Revolution. Beginning with the Seven Ranges in present-day Ohio, the PLSS has been used as the primary survey method in the United States. Following the passage of the Northwest Ordinance in 1787, the Surveyor General of the Northwest Territory platted lands in the Northwest Territory. The Surveyor General was later merged with the United States General Land Office, which later became a part of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Today, the BLM controls the survey, sale, and settling of lands acquired by the United States.
In the United States, a plat (plan) is a cadastral map, drawn to scale, showing the divisions of a piece of land. United States General Land Office surveyors drafted township plats of Public Lands Surveys to show the distance and bearing between section corners, sometimes including topographic or vegetation information. City, town or village plats show subdivisions broken into blocks with streets and alleys. Further refinement often splits blocks into individual lots, usually for the purpose of selling the described lots; this has become known as subdivision.
Torrens title is a land registration and land transfer system, in which a state creates and maintains a register of land holdings, which serves as the conclusive evidence of title of the person recorded on the register as the proprietor (owner), and of all other interests recorded on the register.
Metes and bounds is a system or method of describing land, real property or real estate. The system has been used in England for many centuries and is still used there in the definition of general boundaries. The system is also used in the Canadian province of Ontario, and throughout Canada for the description of electoral districts. By custom, it was applied in the original Thirteen Colonies that became the United States and in many other land jurisdictions based on English common law, including Zimbabwe, South Africa, India and Bangladesh. While still in hand-me-down use, this system has been largely overtaken in the past few centuries by newer systems such as rectangular and lot and block.
A cadastre or cadaster is a comprehensive recording of the real estate or real property's metes-and-bounds of a country. Often it is represented graphically in a cadastral map.
The lot and block survey system is a method used in the United States and Canada to locate and identify land, particularly for lots in densely populated metropolitan areas, suburban areas and exurbs. It is sometimes referred to as the recorded plat survey system or the recorded map survey system.
Land registration is any of various systems by which matters concerning ownership, possession, or other rights in land are formally recorded to provide evidence of title, facilitate transactions, and prevent unlawful disposal. The information recorded and the protection provided by land registration varies widely by jurisdiction.
In real estate, a Land lot or plot of land is a tract or parcel of land owned or meant to be owned by some owner(s). A plot is essentially considered a parcel of real property in some countries or immovable property in other countries. Possible owners of a plot can be one or more persons or another legal entity, such as a company, corporation, organization, government, or trust. A common form of ownership of a plot is called fee simple in some countries.
A cadastral community is a cadastral subdivision of municipalities in the nations of Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, the Netherlands, and the Italian provinces of South Tyrol, Trentino, Gorizia and Trieste. A cadastral community records property ownership in a cadastre, which is a register describing property ownership by boundary lines of the real estate.
Construction surveying or building surveying is to provide dimensional control for all stages of construction work, including the stake out of reference points and markers that will guide the construction of new structures such as roads, rail, or buildings. These markers are usually staked out according to a suitable coordinate system selected for the project.
A unit of real estate or immovable property is limited by a legal boundary. The boundary may appear as a discontinuation in the terrain: a ditch, a bank, a hedge, a wall, or similar, but essentially, a legal boundary is a conceptual entity, a social construct, adjunct to the likewise abstract entity of property rights.
Land surveying in Kentucky is the practice of land surveying in the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
The Association of Canada Lands Surveyors (ACLS) is the national licensing body for professionals surveying in the three Canadian territories, in the Federal parks, on Aboriginal reserves, as well as on and under the surface of Canada's oceans. It is a self-governing, non-profit, non-governmental organization that manages the activities of its members across Canada in the field of cadastral surveying.
Land administration is the way in which the rules of land tenure are applied and made operational. Land administration, whether formal or informal, comprises an extensive range of systems and processes to administer. The processes of land administration include the transfer of rights in land from one party to another through sale, lease, loan, gift and inheritance; the regulating of land and property development; the use and conservation of the land; the gathering of revenues from the land through sales, leasing, and taxation; and the resolving of conflicts concerning the ownership and the use of land. Land administration functions may be divided into four components: Juridical, regulatory, fiscal, and information management. These functions of land administration may be organized in terms of agencies responsible for surveying and mapping, land registration, land valuation and land revenue generation. The purpose and scope of this knowledge domain appear from the following introducing notes:
The Association of British Columbia Land Surveyors (ABCLS) is a self-governing, non-profit, non-governmental organization which sets educational requirements, examines for admission, and regulates professional land surveyors within British Columbia, Canada. The ABCLS is responsible for developing bylaws and guidelines for the conduct of its members, establishing and administering entry requirements for the profession, and liaising with governmental bodies and other associations to improve the quality of the profession's service to the public.
In English common law, real property, real estate, immovable property or, solely in the US and Canada, realty, refers to parcels of land and any associated structures which are the property of a person. In order for a structure to be considered part of the real property, it must be integrated with or affixed to the land. This includes crops, buildings, machinery, wells, dams, ponds, mines, canals, and roads. The term is historic, arising from the now-discontinued form of action, which distinguished between real property disputes and personal property disputes. Personal property, or personalty, was, and continues to be, all property that is not real property.
Highland Park, also known as Highland Pines, is a populated place situated near Prescott and within the Prescott National Forest, in Yavapai County, Arizona, United States. Highland Pines is the promotional name associated with the Highland Park areas several subdivisions. In the Arizona Territorial era up to 1912, and Statehood until around the late 1920s, this particular area of land acted as a cattle ranch with a mining history, lies within the Thumb Butte Mining District, which appears to be initially platted by the Arizona Corporation Highland Pine Properties Inc. beginning in the late 1950s.
The Survey of Palestine was the government department responsible for the survey and mapping of Palestine during the British mandate period.
Brno-Medlánky is a self-governing district of Brno, Czech Republic, on the northern edge of the city. It consists of the district and cadastral area of Medlánky, originally an independent municipality that was annexed to Brno in 1919. Its cadastral area is 3.51 km². The self-governing district was established on November 24, 1990. About 6,100 inhabitants live here.