The ROWs varied in age from historic (1890’s) to present day, as did the quality of available spatial information available for mapping purposes. In some cases, a difficult to read historic map was the only reference, while in other cases, complex surveyed legal descriptions were available.

TSSW employed a variety of conversion techniques to complete this challenging project including COGO, georeferencing, screen digitizing, and existing reference datasets. The complexity of the project was complicated by irregularities in the base registration datasets available for Township/Range/Section. ASLD utilizes the GCDB PLSS from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). This dataset, while very accurate in some areas, varies considerably in rural counties compared to the original 2006 PLSS dataset created by the State of Arizona, digitized from USGS topo maps. Some legal descriptions registered much more accurately to the shape/location of the original PLSS dataset, as the GCDB does have irregularly shaped sections and off-set section corners in some parts of the state. Through creative and well documented workflows and project/data documentation, TSSW was able to accommodate these anomalies.

TSSW created a customized ArcGIS Toolbox application to facilitate ROW conversion. This was particularly useful for transmission line, fiber optic/communication and pipeline conversions, substantially reducing conversion time per ROW.