The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has announced the deployment of “Land and Mineral Use Records” and “Federal Land Stewardship,” two new Web-based data tools within its GeoCommunicator website. Part of the BLM’s E-Government initiative, GeoCommunicator (www.geocommunicator.gov) is a website for the distribution of spatial data from the BLM’s Land and Minerals Records System and the joint BLM-U.S. Forest Service U.S. National Integrated Land System (NILS). NILS uses ESRI’s ArcGIS 9 technology and Model Builder to develop and standardize BLM’s land management business processes.
• The Land and Mineral Use Records tool allows users to search, locate, access, and display records of the use authorizations that the BLM issues to the public for commodities and uses such as oil and gas, coal, sand, gravel, grazing, communication sites, and right-of-ways. This is the first time the land and mineral use record and mining claim data has been available, spatially, from the BLM. Currently, the new application contains mining claims and oil and gas parcels only. More data will be made available each quarter.
• The Federal Land Stewardship tool, a part of the NILS solution allows users to search, locate, and display the federal land management boundaries for federal lands in the United States. The browser-based viewer can be used to graphically or textually locate the federal land of interest. Users can select by township and range, latitude and longitude, federal land name, or by drawing a box on a map. The results of the search will display the selected area with symbolized boundaries that indicate the federal surface management agencies responsible for the federal lands. Users are able to view or “stream” live data directly to their desktop for use in GIS applications. The data represents the "best available" seamless source of the federal surface management agency boundaries. Much of the BLM data has been snapped to the Public Land Survey System making it more accurate than previous versions of the data layers.
"We are very excited about these tools,” said Tom Lonnie, the BLM’s Assistant Director for Minerals, Realty and Resource Protection. “The creation of a national seamless dataset will allow information to be more accurate and more readily accessed and will ultimately save the public a lot of time and effort. By giving the public greater access to data they can use, these tools help make government more responsive and cost-effective, which is the goal of the President’s E-Government initiative.”
For more information on GeoCommunicator or NILS contact:
Leslie Cone, BLM L&RPO Project Manager WO-330D
P.O. Box 25047 – Denver, CO 80225
(303) 236-0815
Email: leslie_cone@blm.gov
The BLM, an agency of the U.S. Department of the Interior, manages more land—261 million surface acres—than any other Federal agency. Most of this public land is located in 12 Western States, including Alaska. The Bureau, with a budget of about $1.9 billion, also administers 700 million acres of sub-surface mineral estate throughout the nation. The BLM’s multiple-use mission is to sustain the health and productivity of the public lands for the use and enjoyment of present and future generations. The Bureau accomplishes this by managing such activities as outdoor recreation, livestock grazing, mineral development, and energy production, and by conserving natural, historical, cultural, and other resources on the public lands.