Parcel Mapping Presentations - Daveis Center, UWEC Campus.

Introduction 

I entered the convention at roughly 11:30 am and sat down in a chair at a table and brought out my computer and sat down to start absorbing in the thrilling enviroment. Parcel Mapping, I could smell the excitment.  But in all honesty, there seems to be roughly 60 people here and their is a buzz in the room as the group seems to be in an intermission from the presentations.  The banter, i cannot be sure, but i assume is all about maps of years past.... or not, I cant really tell. On the large conference room projector at the front of the room, the slide reads, 'How does the PLSS help improve the Accuracy'.  After not long, a lady announces over the microphone that a question session was about to begin. The chatter quickly stopped, for battle was about to begin.

Question session 

The lady then went around to the tables, and a spoke to a representative whom gave an answer for each table.  In total there were roughly 9 tables, all filled with dedicated men and women eagerly awaiting there chance to answer the question at hand.  At the back of the room was a refreshment table, stocked with tea, water, and soda.  I quietly grabbed myself a cup of tea, topped it up with some milk and sugar and made my why down to my chair.  Shortly after i sat down, the proctor of the debate (who seemed to know alot of the people there).  As I listened to the questions, I took note of the notable points people were making.  Here are some of things I heard discussed throughout the question session, which ended with a break for lunch at about 11:45.  

Question 1: Why do parcel maps need to be accurate, and what aspects of accuracy are most important?" 

• Accuracy depends on use - urban (high acc) vs rural (low acc is ok)
• No absolute accuracy - all dependent on use of map
• as long as no overlaps/errors - use is most important 
• completeness, positional accuracy, curentness = importance 
• Tax payer deserves 100 accuracy, nothing short.
• currentness should be real time - do not wait to updates (temporal accuracy)

The guy who said these last two points seemed pretty pissed off 

Question 2: How does the PLSS help improve the accuracy of parcel mapping

• Do not use PLSS - gives better visual representation
• yeah attribute info, but can put aerial imagery or lidar in it? no 
• good for attributes and index - general visual aid.
• good for small scale maps - not large 
• old subdavisions are the only none useful aspects of the PLSS
• current PLSS are mainly derived from very old parcels - system needs upgrade.
• helps taxing process immensely
• Outlines  hierarchy of how land is divided. Locks down framework to further breakdown land divisions

The heat really started turning up at this point, people were feeling it.  Alas, the tension was broken when some one made a joke about how fast the guy was typing the question answers from each table, with only two fingers.  It was actually pretty impressive. 

The overall vibe consensus i got from these questions was the the PLSS grid system is good for some stuff but is not reliable in other senses.  The use, defines its relative utility. It cannot be used in activates that require hyper accuracy, a good example I heard that it should never be used to clip aerial imagery or lidar data because it will not give an accurate clip.  However, in terms of urban planning and property disputes, it provides a huge advantage.  Another good point that i heard was how much large corporations depend on PLSS information to look for fraud in thing like insurance claims. The law has a lot to do with the systems importance, it is one of the few continuous grid system that crosses the entire country, and has long since been used for dividing land uses.

Another big thing I noticed amidst the tension was there was a clear divide between the Survey Workers and the GIS workers.  I was a bit confused by this, but the divide seems to be based on what i discussed in the paragraph above. The GIS pros seemed to be more against the PLSS and the surveyors seemed to me much more for it.  A classic battle of new school vs. old school.  In the end, the conclusion I came upon my self was that the PLSS system is good for defining property lines and subdividing larger land divisions into smaller ones.  But, for use in highly accurate geoproccessing operations, they are too archaic and inaccurate to be relied upon for much.