This dataset contains mining claim cases with the case disposition (status) of anything other than closed from US Bureau of Land Management's, BLM, Mineral and Land Record System(MLRS). The BLM only requires that mining claims be identified down to the affected quarter section(s)—as such, that is what the MLRS research map and public reports will reflect, most commonly. Claim boundaries, as staked and monumented, are found in the accepted Notice/Certificate of Location as part of the official case file, managed by the BLM State Office having jurisdiction over the claim.The geometries are created in multiple ways but are primarily derived from Legal Land Descriptions (LLD) for the case and geocoded (mapped) using the Public Land Survey System (PLSS) derived from the most accurate survey data available through BLM Cadastral Survey workforce. Geospatial representations might be missing for some cases that can not be geocoded using the MLRS algorithm.
Each case is given a data quality score based on how well it mapped. These can be lumped into seven groups to provide a simplified way to understand the scores.
- Group 1: Direct PLSS Match. Scores “0”, “1”, “2”, “3” should all have a match to the PLSS data. There are slight differences, but the primary expectation is that these match the PLSS.
- Group 2: Calculated PLSS Match. Scores “4”, “4.1”, “5”, “6”, “7” and “8” were generated through a process of creating the geometry that is not a direct capture from the PLSS. They represent a best guess based on the underlining PLSS
- Group 3 – Mapped to Section. Score of “8.1”, “8.2”, “8.3”, “9” and “10” are mapped to the Section for various reasons (refer to log information in data quality field).
- Group 4- Combination of mapped and unmapped areas. Score of 15 represents a case that has some portions that would map and others that do not.
- Group 5 – No NLSDB Geometry, Only Attributes. Scores “11”, “12”, “20”, “21” and “22” do not have a match to the PLSS and no geometry is in the NLSDB, and only attributes exist in the data.
- Group 6 – Mapped to County. Scores of “25” map to the County.
- Group 7 – Improved Geometry. Scores of “100” are cases that have had their geometry edited by BLM staff using ArcGIS Pro or MLRS bulk upload tool.