Boundary and Land Surveying
Deeds describe intent; the ground tests it
Boundary surveying asks whether the record was realized on the ground. Federal PLSS questions are frequent: principal meridian and baseline; townships by tier (north/south) and range (east/west); 36 sections numbered from the northeast corner in a serpentine pattern, with Section 6 at the northwest corner and usually irregular. Sections subdivide into aliquot parts; lost corners are re-established by proportioning between accepted original corners - but proportioning never overrides a recovered original monument.
Meander lines along navigable waters are not boundaries; the water's edge is. Know accretion (gradual and imperceptible - the riparian owner gains), erosion, reliction, and avulsion (sudden - the boundary stays where it was). For non-navigable streams the boundary is generally the thread of the stream; for navigable waters under the equal-footing doctrine the state holds the bed and the boundary is the ordinary high water mark unless the deed says otherwise.
Traps
- Treating a meander line as a boundary line.
- Applying accretion principles to an avulsive change.
- Accepting a found pin without comparing it to record and adjoining evidence.
- Letting lot area control over a monument call.
- Confusing title (a legal question) with boundary location (a surveying question).
Worked example
A 1998 flood cuts a new channel across a bend, abandoning the old bed overnight. This is avulsion, not accretion - the boundary remains at the pre-flood location, even though the water now runs elsewhere.