Note: Working Group and Subcommittee Charter Updates

The Cadastral Subcommittee develops and implements  plans to coordinate cadastral data-related activities among  Federal, State, Tribal, and local governments, and the  private sector. 

As examples, subcommittee members  work with the wildland fire community to identify sources  of land parcel data, standardize available data, and build  sustainable operational procedures to provide land parcel  data for wildland fire applications in coordination with States.  The subcommittee works with public domain States— those States using the PLSS—to standardize the best  available statewide data in the State, to identify the optimum  maintenance work flow, and to publish a maintainable  standardized dataset. The subcommittee’s outreach Web  site is at nationalcad.org. 

The subcommittee also coordinates with other FGDC  subcommittees on cadastral-related topics. Examples include coordination with the Boundary Working Group to identify, document, and locate cadastral data sources for boundaries that are dependent on cadastral features, and the FGDC Geodetic Control Subcommittee to explore the option for integrating control collected for cadastral datasets with national control datasets.

Recent accomplishments

FY 2015 Accomplishments

  • Land Buy-Back Program for Tribal Nations (Buy-Back). The Buy-Back Program is an outcome from the Cobell v. Salazar lawsuit and is a program to support the reconsolidation of the fractionated interests on Indian Lands. There are over 300 Indian reservations in the United States and of these, 153 were identified as candidates for the program. Since 2012, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has completed the construction of a geodatabase
    and validating land records data for over 500,000 Indian parcels on 80 of the 153 reservations. The remaining 73 of
    153 reservations will be completed in 2016. Upon request from the Indian Buy-Back Program, the BLM is performing updates to the geodatabases for these reservations. The standard PLSS data combined with the land descriptions from the Bureau of Indian Affair's (BIA) Trust Asset and Accounting Management System are the major sources of information used to construct the database. In addition to the buy-back reservations, BLM will complete geodatabases and data validation for 25 reservations in 2015 and 30 reservations in 2016. In 2016, much of the responsibility for this effort related to the Indian tract/parcel geodatabases will be transferred to the BIA. The BLM will retain responsibility for PLSS data. The BIA also is the lead agency for the reservation boundary updates. The BLM and the BIA continued working together to improve records and update reservation boundaries that are critical to supporting the program.

  • Federal Rights and Interests. The Cadastral Subcommittee completed a review of Federal rights
    databases and produced a final summary report.

  • Standardized PLSS – Nationwide Status. The PLSS dataset is a National Geospatial Data Asset. The BLM facilitated and (or) completed the standardization of 29 of the 30 PLSS States, with Oklahoma still pending but scheduled for completion in fiscal year 2016. These are initial standardized datasets that are continuing to be updated with added control, partnership activities, and new surveys. The Cadastral Subcommittee completed the dataset collection level metadata and registered it in the Data.gov and Geoplatform.gov catalog.

  • Cadastral Survey Control. Partners from Utah, Montana, Idaho, BLM’s Eastern State Office, and private land  surveyors developed a multi-State (multijurisdictional) cadastral control database that supports the online
    submission, review, and publication of collected survey control. The BLM continues its efforts to coordinate with
    NGS to find an appropriate national hosting site for a national cadastral control dataset.

  • Digital Parcel Map Data and State Stewardship. The BLM continued to support the advancement of State stewardship for the assembling, aggregation, standardization, and publishing of locally sourced parcel data. Through the wildland fire support and boundary quality improvement efforts, it is very apparent that State-hosted,  standardized, accessible parcel data is essential to support many Federal, State, and local programs.

Activity Reports

The FGDC Cadastral Subcommittee provides a progress reports to the FGDC Coordination Group. These reports contain the most current updates on the activities of the Subcommittee.

All Updates

Resources