Old Technical Report on Using Coordinates in Legal Descriptions

[Mike Mueller]

Hardcopy obtained from the files of Richard Coughlan who's remaining records are in the Sonoma County CLSA Historical Records Collection.

The first two pages are the meeting minutes of The East Bay Council on Surveying and Mapping, which prepared the Bulletin.

The assertion on page 4 (2 of the Report) that coordinates are better than monuments since they are more permanent struck a nerve for me considering the forthcoming changes to 8771. Too bad they didn't know about continental drift back then and account for it better. After writing that sentence, I wonder what basic thing the future will wish we knew about :)

Mikey Mueller, PLS 9076
Sonoma County

[hellsangle]

I could only find author: J.R. Godman, LS 2724 being a licensed land surveyor
The other two, if I got it correct, may be CEs, 9864 & 11630.

Some CEs get caught up in the math . . . which this could be one of those proposals. (Some other countries like coordinates for corners)

Interesting history, Mikey.

Crazy Phil's two cents

[DWoolley]

Today there exists a constituency of land surveyors in California that supports using coordinates for legal descriptions and property subdivision. In 2016, the use of coordinates was proposed as a modification to the Public Resource Code. I have listened to those that advocate the use of coordinates over monuments. At that time, my counter position was California law and every case involving land boundaries, for more than 150 years, does not recognize coordinates to determine boundary locations.

The exact language proposed in 2016 was:

"8814. California Coordinate System (CCS) coordinates may be used for property identification on any map, survey, conveyance, or other instrument which delineates or affects the title to real property or which delineates, describes, or refers to the property, or any part thereof provided that, the controlling stations and their applicable controlling coordinates, the applicable geodetic datum, epoch date, and zone are appropriately noted, and that the description is unambiguous respecting all valid senior rights."

I was one of only a handful of people that opposed the changes in legislation that offered priority to coordinates. Next time it comes up, I will let it go through. The lay people using GPS to create subdivisions and establish boundaries are more likely and better suited to be able to replicate a coordinate rather than search for and evaluate boundary evidence and/or to write legal descriptions.

DWoolley

[Ric7308]

What is the difference between surveyors using a high quality solar compass and calibrated Gunter's Chain setting PLSS corners and subsequent breakdowns in the 1800s and surveyors using equipment that can easily determine CA coordinates using the proper methodologies setting corners in the the 21st century....................................when the monuments are originally set in the incorrect location and relied upon by property owners, fence builders, utility locators, etc.?

My bet would be on the fact that just like the original government notes, plats, patents, deeds, subsequent surveys, etc. - coordinates would simply be evidence as to the location of the original property monument and not proof.

[DWoolley]

What is the difference between surveyors using a high quality solar compass and calibrated Gunter's Chain setting PLSS corners and subsequent breakdowns in the 1800s and surveyors using equipment that can easily determine CA coordinates using the proper methodologies setting corners in the the 21st century....................................when the monuments are originally set in the incorrect location and relied upon by property owners, fence builders, utility locators, etc.?

My bet would be on the fact that just like the original government notes, plats, patents, deeds, subsequent surveys, etc. - coordinates would simply be evidence as to the location of the original property monument and not proof.

As it stands today, subdivision mapping and legal descriptions are tied to CGPS/CORS stations as a basis of bearings - quite often incorrectly technically and out of compliance with the PRC (discussion for another thread). Coordinates could be calculated on each corner. For the re-establishment of corners those coordinates are meaningless. That was not the vision associated with the 2016 proposed modification to the PRC. The vision was to create legal descriptions similar to:

"Beginning at CGPS station having a published coordinate...thence bearing and distance to a pointing having a coordinate of...being the true point of beginning....thence to a point having a coordinate of...[recite a senior line]...

Coordinates are based on the published xx epoch, elevation, [datum information]."

As explained to me, one "benefit" to the proposed system was not having to set or maintain monuments because the coordinates would control the boundary location. It was further explained that the boundary case law would catch up to the coordinate cadaster out of necessity.

In 2016, I thought the idea of using coordinates to control boundaries was preposterous. I was stuck in the old ways of thinking land surveying was essential to society by protecting the property rights, property infrastructure etc (everything in 8726). I believed there was a common understanding that protecting the public from some of us was the shared paramount obligation among all of the licensed professionals. In reality, we have folks celebrating a judge that overlooked a professional not finding an original monument, being "legal" was way down the list of priorities for one regular contributor, and so on...I thought legislation, regulation and education would change the course of the profession. My former Pollyanna perspective has plagued me all of my idealistic life.

DWoolley

[Warren Smith]

Dave,

That sounds a bit like the state-sponsored Torrens title system.

[DWoolley]

Dave,

That sounds a bit like the state-sponsored Torrens title system.

Yes, in some regards.

DWoolley

[DWoolley]

I read the attached “East Bay Council on Surveying and Mapping” dated March 28, 1962 and revised May 6, 1964. There is an admirable level of sophistication in technical writing and simplicity in the presentation of the concepts – on par for ACSM affiliates of that era. The organization’s leadership appears to be public agencies that were centric to Contra Costa County.

Besides the discussion on the use of coordinates, there are several recommendations “…in their use common sense dictates adherence to certain requirements made by law or custom”. The paper also references Professor Phillip Kissam, technical land survey author, offering six rules in preparing property descriptions. Kissam's "Surveying for Civil Engineers" has been in my library for as long as I can remember. In 2012, I valued some of his materials so much that I was in discussions with McGraw Hill to purchase portions of his copyrighted materials in the book. I did not want the single source materials lost to antiquity. Kissam taught at Princeton University.

For those that did not download the paper, some recommendations and rules include:

4. Grid data must be derived from an actual field survey made of the entire parcel at the time of and by the surveyor establishing coordinates. The practice of rotating record bearings to grid, based on field tie to a single line is not recommended.

[They recognized a two-monument tango was not acceptable. I have checked maps in this region and found that oftentimes there is a single tie to a CGPS station - which does not allow for a traverse check to verify the tie is correct or the map bearings are actually on SPC.

And yet, Rule 5 describes writing legal descriptions based on two field surveyed monuments and further recommends “…two monuments must be set marking the longest property line.” And “all monuments should have sufficient ties to permit re-establishing one that is lost. In other words, the best method is to base the description on a system of monuments interconnected by surveys.” This would have result in a mathematical GIS system over time.]

Rule 1. Each description in a recorded deed should bear the name of the person responsible for the description.

Rule 6. All dimensions of property lines and all bearings shall be stated, and no “more or less” distances shall be used [wait, what?]...As to the first statement in Rule 6, proper land surveying methods demand the location of the adjoining lines, and “more or less” added to the distance entirely destroys the value of that distance. No purchaser of real estate should accept such a description because it affords no protection. Leave off decimals if you will, but let us rid ourselves of “more or less”.

I am left wondering why these so-called “common sense” requirements did take hold after more than 60 years. Surely, that group did more work. Their writing reminds me of work by the LA City/ACSM folks from the same era.

I am not clear as to whether I am encouraged or discouraged that there were folks that recognized the need for "common sense" standards back in the early 1960s. I wonder if a small cadre of anti-regulation local Bensonites beat them down? Why didn't local Bensonite antithesis push standards through to adoption? The majority of the members listed in the paper were civil engineers, was it the loss of the civil engineers from the practice of land surveying that contributed to the loss of writing about the technical issues? Curiouser and curiouser.

Mikey, thank you for sharing, really interesting material to me. I sincerely appreciate it.

DWoolley

"To all of my students, who have taught me more than I like to admit" Phillip Kissam.

[LS_8750]

I recall back in the mid 90s a job down in San Diego where I was a resident engineer on a bunch of wastewater treatment and pipeline work. I must have processed a dozen or so persnickety change orders for the contractor because the plans showed coordinates for the pipeline connections to junction boxes, etc., and the contractor kept missing the coordinates by a couple tenths or so...... Old man got the design and construction team together one morning and told us he did not want to see another fu***ing coordinate on a plan ever again.

Lesson learned.

[Mike Mueller]

Dave,

That sounds a bit like the state-sponsored Torrens title system.

Yes, in some regards.

DWoolley

If I set aside my own love of surveying and considered what would help society most, I would say a SPC based Torrens system is probably best in the long run. It would require a dense enough system of CORS that the local quakes and earth movements could be accounted for https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0496gdg209o and it would take a lot of work getting all the parcels into the system, but if such a dense network existed I think it would solve a lot of future issues.

I was just discussing with another surveyor that in 40-60 years we would have an augmented reality layer available for all peoples AR (augmented reality) smart glasses that would show state plan coordinates overlaid on the world. Such a system would then let every boundary linked to the SPC be immediately reviewable by everyone. So if a person is about to buy some land, they could just turn on the SPC boundary layer and see the boundaries overlaid on the ground and could compare it to the fences, in real time. Same for every layer that is in a GIS now. They could do the same for the neighbors boundary and see if there are gaps or overlaps.

Most (all?) of the legal underpinnings for monuments being paramount comes from their visibility and reliance by buyers of land. An AR layer would be even more apparent and easy to use. Use blockchain to ensure the coordinates are not tampered with.

For those thinking augmented reality glasses are too far off, there was a guy using Google Glass in 2013 to automatically recognize all peoples faces around him, and then float their name and whatever he could scrape off the internet about them over their head. That was 11 years ago. https://www.wired.com/story/google-glas ... cognition/

BIMs are the same idea, just contained to a fixed references system of a building, rather than the state. Which is just a question of scale, not ability. The novel Daemon by Daniel Suarez goes into the augmented reality glasses concept quite well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemon_(novel)

Idea proposed in book in 2006, implemented (partially) in 2013, public outcry about privacy and such lead to google glass going away in 20teens. Fast forward to today and Amazon has augmented reality glasses for $359. https://www.amazon.com/Glasses-Wearable ... l8fTR&th=1

I am betting that the under 35 years old crowd, a generation that has no concept of privacy, will not mind everyone having augmented reality glasses surround them at all times. Then society will catch up with tech, and everyone will embrace and utilize AR just like the internet was in the 1990s.

Or not, and we will be putting inert chunks of iron in the ground while the world zips by :)

Mikey Mueller, PLS 9076
Sonoma County

[LS_8750]

How many surveyors and how many boundary surveys will be required to re-establish and catalog every corner of real property in California via SPC?
How many conflicts and disputes and lawsuits along the way?
40-60 years?

I bet we as surveyors couldn't even get out of a block in Sonoma County's Coffee Park without a dispute.
How long does each lawsuit last?

I see your vision as well.
I think it will take much longer to get there.

It would be real fun if we get de-regulated.

[Steve Martin]

J. R. Godman was Chief Surveyor of East Bay MUD for many years. I found evidence around the office that EBMUD was very active in the East Bay Council on Surveying and Mapping. Coordinate Indexes and geodetic control data was well managed and state of the industry in the 1960's. EBMUD worked with Professor Moffet at UC Berkeley to put California Coordinate System plane coordinates on the new Right of Way map for its 90 mile long fee aqueduct R/W. Documentation of that effort beyond the northings and eastings listed on the R/W map appears to be lost to time. Elevations used on the aqueduct predate NGVD29, but appear to be very close, again no documentation.

As for coordinates being used for property descriptions, due to their variability, they are much lower on the evidentiary chain than boundary monuments, natural or artificial, to me. For a Corner Record, would you accept RTK ties from CGPS stations up to 100,000' away? or should field measured local ties within 100' be required? There is a difference in how accurate the corner can be reestablished either way.

[Mike Mueller]

I bet we as surveyors couldn't even get out of a block in Sonoma County's Coffee Park without a dispute.
How long does each lawsuit last?

There were a few blocks that didn't have issues... Issues created by surveyors I mean. But point taken.

I am confident the technology will be there to see ±3cm accuracy state plane coordinates for anything you wish to know the coordinate for within 40 years. Whether or not those coordinates are related to a boundary will be up to society. I would say it will be like cell phones vs land lines in its implementation. There will be some percentage of the population that will never have their boundary surveyed into the system, but that percent will decrease in line with the mortality rate... It might take a home ownership cycle after the augmented reality SPC overlay is common, but its coming.

Anyone up for a 1 beer bet we will see AR glasses showing boundary lines based on SPC? It will come due sometime between now and 2064 :)

Mikey Mueller, PLS 9076
Sonoma County

[hellsangle]

I am curious if someone were handed only SPC coords to lay out a twenty-story high-rise - would they?

Amateur radio operators have what's called a "fox hunts" . . . whereby they hide a transmitter . . . and use directional antennas to find the source.

I am curious if one would "hide" a passive monument, assign it SPC coordinates, (x-Epoch) . . . the over time with different firms . . . see what the "repeatability" is? I would ass-u-me we'd have a new "pin cushion"?

I don't think Geodesy is for everyone, save, the vendors spiel.

Crazy Phil . . .

[Mike Mueller]

I am curious if one would "hide" a passive monument, assign it SPC coordinates, (x-Epoch) . . . the over time with different firms . . . see what the "repeatability" is? I would ass-u-me we'd have a new "pin cushion"?

In todays world I would agree with you. However in my vision of the future, since everyone is using the same software, running on basically the same hardware I would expect them to all be within a few centimeters, or better.

Part of my assumption is that as the tech gets better, there is less and less human interaction with the knobs and levers. So there are fewers points where the respective procedures can differ. I was reading a telerometer manual, and it had a skill set to use well. Same with the Kelsh Plotter I have sitting in my basement. Lots of skill to use that thing (skills I do not have btw). Lots of points where decisions by the operator will effect the outcome. How much human involvement is there in creating surfaces from photos nowadays? Its all sent off to a couple different companies who will produce basically the same surface.

Consider this example:
Set up a bollard with a screw for the instrument and another bollard with a screw for the target a couple hundred feet away so there is zero error on centering etc. Then have various companies using whatever equipment they usually use, measurement difference between them. Then have a group of folks use a steel tape to do the same thing. My prediction is that the steel tape will return a variety of lengths prolly floating within a tenth or two of each other. For the laser (raises pinky like Dr. Evil) I would expect to be within 0.005 for everyone. For RTK I would expect 0.05, and static I would expect 0.03.

What was the length of time between the common use of the steel tape on a boundary survey and a total station using lasers? 40-50 years?

The SPC will be the same once the hardware/software/user interface all develop to the point that it doesn't need a human to make a decision about the how, just about the what.

Minor tangent:
Part of getting to a truly subcentimeter accuracy for GPS will require a good model of the atmosphere above each unit, however we know how to do that (https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang ... tmosphere/) with lasers sampling the air. Its just expensive and hard for now. Technology seems to make things easier and cheaper, so I would expect that at some point every CORS will be running lasers to measure the air between the receiver and the various satellites, and then all that data being used to create a 3D model of the atmosphere. Kinda like how the geoid models of gravity had to be developed and then densified to get good elevations from GPS.

Mikey Mueller PLS 9076
Sonoma County

[Peter Ehlert]

However when there is confusion about which foot, or the metric conversion, it all goes to hell.
Often it is a Bigger error that is obvious to most of us, but sometimes it's Tiny and inherit in the collection and recording method (untrackable)
...
I'm not going to be around long enough to see the bloody toes in several decades

[Steve Martin]

Minor tangent:
Part of getting to a truly subcentimeter accuracy for GPS will require a good model of the atmosphere above each unit, however we know how to do that (https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang ... tmosphere/) with lasers sampling the air. Its just expensive and hard for now. Technology seems to make things easier and cheaper, so I would expect that at some point every CORS will be running lasers to measure the air between the receiver and the various satellites, and then all that data being used to create a 3D model of the atmosphere. Kinda like how the geoid models of gravity had to be developed and then densified to get good elevations from GPS.

Mikey Mueller PLS 9076
Sonoma County

GPS is used to model the atmosphere. It is even used to predict extreme precipitation events by measuring water vapor in the air.

[Mike Mueller]

GPS is used to model the atmosphere. It is even used to predict extreme precipitation events by measuring water vapor in the air.

Isn't that modeling somewhat blunt though since all we get is the total change in time which lets us gives us a TEC as it relates to the unique path between each receiver and each SV? The various wavelengths of the signal let us detect and measure the refraction but I thought the granularity of the data was lacking since we only know the ins and outs, and we don't really know at what point in the path the various changes occur? I haven't kept up with the newer editions of Van Sickles, am I missing out on something?

To you point, the main reason I still like to use a base and rover setup is that we figure its the best way to get a local atmosphere check compared to the rover only over a network.

Mikey Mueller, PLS 9076
Sonoma County

[DWoolley]

A CGPS station (TRAK) in the center of Orange County moves N39W 0.136' per year. If the coordinates the for the legal descriptions or mapping were in 1991.35 the points/values have moved 4.5' (2024-1991x0.136'). I believe the geostationary L5 single frequency RTK units produce a real-time coordinate i.e. 2024 and are advertised as having "1cm" (0.03') accuracy. What could go wrong?

In the next couple of years, NGS will publish the new reference frame (NATRF 2022) that will replace NAD83 and NAVD88. I believe the local vertical shift will be about 1.5' and the horizontal shift from US Survey Feet to International Feet is approximately 12'. Of course, once we get the new reference frame we start tallying epochs again. Understanding and complying with the California Public Resource Code was another missed opportunity for the land surveying community.

I have been speaking to regulatory boards, trade associations and others about these epoch deltas as more unlicensed (not surveyors) folks move into mapping the world. I believe the world outside of the land surveying community is interested in learning and willing to regulate to protect the public.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfH2ftr-lTQ

I started talking at 2:21:49 - for about 8 minutes.

DWoolley

[Steve Martin]

Isn't that modeling somewhat blunt though since all we get is the total change in time which lets us gives us a TEC as it relates to the unique path between each receiver and each SV? The various wavelengths of the signal let us detect and measure the refraction but I thought the granularity of the data was lacking since we only know the ins and outs, and we don't really know at what point in the path the various changes occur? I haven't kept up with the newer editions of Van Sickles, am I missing out on something?

To you point, the main reason I still like to use a base and rover setup is that we figure its the best way to get a local atmosphere check compared to the rover only over a network.

Mikey Mueller, PLS 9076
Sonoma County

With a robust network, most of the errors impacting the GPS signal can be minimized so that the delay caused by water droplets can be estimated, thus giving and estimate of precipitation.

If you are under 8km from your base station or CGPS, the single base solution is probably best because there is some modeling for the atmospheric delays. Once you get over 8-12km, the atmospheric paths are significantly different, and the modeling helps improve the solution. Single base does not model the atmosphere, other than to use a standard setting.