How often in their ceaseless wanderings over the face of the earth must men have paused as they topped the ridge or gained the pass to study the lay of the land?
Each topographic form had its message. Mountains were forbidding; craggy ravines were perilous; broad valleys, beckoning. Prairies, plains, and savannas stretched to the far horizons to be laboriously crossed on foot, on horseback, by travois, or by lumbering wagon trains.
Wherever their urgings or headings led them, our forebears avoided the unfavorable situation and sought those conditions within the landscape best suited to their needs. Sometimes these were as immediate as water, food, or forage, sometimes as permanent as fortification or homestead. With the same atavistic instinct, each of us by habit still constantly surveys the landscape about us to avoid areas of hazard or discomfort, to trace the most favorable path, and to attain the most suitable situation. This feel for the land is inborn; it is in our bones and blood.
For many thousands of years, our predecessors have gathered the bounty of the grasslands, waterways, and forests without causing significant damage. As they fished, set their snares, or hunted game, they left the land and waters as they found them. Their canoes glided silently through the unspoiled wilderness, their horses were tethered, and their herds grazed without lasting disruption of the natural cover. Their early encampments left no lasting scars and were soon overgrown. Even the first settlements and clearings fitted to the slopes and water edges were of little ecologic consequence.
Every day some 12 square miles of American farmland is usurped by development.
As populations increased, however, the effects of people’s working have become more and more evident. Blazed trails have become roadways. Scattered farms have been consolidated to push back the marsh and woodland, sometimes to extinction. The early villages on the banks of a stream have swallowed the stream and usurped the banks of the nearby river. Village and town limits have been extended relentlessly outward to be interconnected with additional roads and with railways and, often canals. Within a few bustling centuries, our native American landscape has been transformed into an expanse of farmsteads, subdivisions, burgeoning cities, sprawling industrial complexes, and far-flung transportation systems. Often the only vestiges of wilderness left are those isolated fringes too difficult of access, too deep in the ooze, too dry, or too close to the rock for economic development.
In the past decade we have lost farmlands equivalent to the combined areas of Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey and Delaware.
Peter J. Ognibene
Sonoran Preserve. Christopher Brown, FASLA, JJR|Floor
Where the uses of land have been well suited to the sites, the resulting farms, roadways, and communities may be in all ways agreeable. We have flown over such settlements that seem nestled into the countryside. We have traveled inviting roads that weave pleasantly through the landscape, introducing us to woodland, meadow, streams, well-ordered fields, orchards, and abundant valleys. We have delighted in towns that seem to have blossomed spontaneously upon the crown of a hill or in cities terraced gracefully down to the river edge or harbor.
Well-suited developments intelligently planned can produce an integration of designed forms and modified landscape superior to the original. The best of the indigenous features can be preserved and incorporated. Or they may be conserved for limited uses and to maintain the native setting. The natural attractions may thus be enjoyed and appreciated daily to enrich the living experience. Such installations convey a sense of stability and fitness. They “sing” in the landscape, and they sing in harmony.
Adapt to the landforms:
To diminish landscape disruption
To reduce the costs of earthwork
To prevent the wasting of topsoil
To preclude the need for erosion control and replanting
To make use of existing drainageways
To blend into the natural scene
The code of the American subdivider and homebuilder (as it would seem to the casual observer)
Axiom 1. Clear the land.
Axiom 2. Strip the topsoil (or bury it and haul in new if this saves one operation).
Axiom 3. Provide a “workable” land profile (that is, as flat as possible).
Axiom 4. Conduct all water to storm sewers (or else to the edge of the lot).
Axiom 5. Build a good wide road—inexpensive but wide.
Axiom 6. Set the house well back for a big front yard.
Axiom 7. Keep the fronts even (this looks neat).
Axiom 8. Hold to a minimum side yard.
Axiom 9. Throw on some lawn seed.
By means of site reconnaissance and soil surveys the most productive land can be designated for lawns, gardens, or crop production or be preserved in its natural state. Areas of thin soil, poor or excessive drainage, or underlying rock are prime candidates for projected development. Homes, roadways, and cities belong on areas of low productivity.
The American suburbanite dream (as seemingly interpreted by the suburban builder and by our present building restrictions)
A revised topography by courtesy of the bulldozer and carryall. The boulders are buried, the natural cover stripped, the brook “contained” in storm sewer or culvert. The topsoil is redistributed as a 4-inch skin over sand, clay, or rock.
There sprouts a new artificial fauna of exotic nursery stock.
This is our constructed paradise.
A better way is building with nature and in compression, which provides the human scale and charm we find so appealing in the older cultures, in which economy of materials and space dictated a close relationship of structure and landscape form.
The natural ground forms are best accepted as givens. They are the resolution of myriad forces at work over a long period of time. To adapt to them is to harmonize with the forces and conditions by which they have evolved.
Where, however, the uses imposed are unsuited, where they are awkward in plan or clumsy in execution, the result is distressing to both the eye and the intellect. Moreover, the disruptive consequences may be costly, even catastrophic. For the immutable forces of nature have a way of rejecting those built intrusions which violate the land.
If humankind is to thrive—yea, even survive—it is incumbent upon us to study and apply those principles by which we can bring our species and nature into symbiotic balance. The problems of encroaching civilization, the imperiled land, and the increasing need for its care have together become our heritage.
Each state, country, or municipality has as one of it’s chief responsibilities a plan for the conservation and best use of the lands within its jurisdiction.
Land and the waters that lap its edges, flow across its surface, seep into its upper soil strata, and move within its deep aquifers are our ultimate resources. Mismanaged, they may be lost to us forever, and our national wealth and well-being proportionately diminished.
Before dividing our remaining land reserves into fragmented ownership parcels, it would be good to look at them in their wholeness to see what functions they now perform as farmland, forest, and open space. New patterns for their preservation, conservation, or thoughtfully considered development can then be devised. It is a matter of priorities, of seeing that each broad area of land is devoted to its most reasonable uses and that all land areas together are formed into logical systems.
As long as I have the land … then I’m a rich man. Everything I need—my food, clothes, house, heat—it’s all out there.
Alaskan Inuit, as quoted by John McPhee
Perhaps the most crucial function of our un-built-upon land areas is that of topsoil reservoir. This vital substance is the basis of all agricultural productivity. It occurs, where it still exists, as a thin layer of weathered rock intermixed with organic matter in depths ranging from a few inches to a few feet. This rich skim overlaying the subsoils and naked rock may be thousands of years in the making. Once lost, it is gone forever. We in the United States have dissipated in the span of five centuries well over one-third of our vital topsoil endowment. It has been scooped, hauled, or washed and blown away to the rivers and thence transported to the sea. This is a loss no nation can afford. The disastrous consequences of misuse and waste of topsoil are to be observed in most of the arid regions of the world.
Severe soil erosion. Tim McCabe, National Resources Conservation Service (NRSC)
Productivity
All forms of life derive from the land and its cover of soil. There, in the chlorophyll of rooted plants, carbon dioxide and moisture are transformed by the energy of the sun into the basic sugars and starches of our food chain. This is a miracle of chemistry occurring only when the conditions are right. The resulting types of vegetation and animal life vary endlessly from patch to patch and from region to region. It is only recently that we have come to understand how closely all are interrelated.
Conservation is a way of life which deals wisely with all natural resources, recognizing them to be … irreplaceable and essential to the welfare of mankind.
Warner S. Goshorn
When any area of land is disturbed, the delicate balances are shifted and the repercussions of change may be felt many miles away. This is not to imply that all natural or cultivated food-yielding land should be left unmodified. Often, with husbandry, its nutrient yield may be increased, and for many types of terrain there may be more important uses. It is, rather, proposed that in land planning and utilization the most productive areas are to be defined and protected. This is fully as true in the layout of a residential property as in the comprehensive planning of a state.
An analogy: that in its land and resource planning each state be considered as a developing farmstead. An astute farmer would study the land until he or she came to understand it—its nature, constraints, and possibilities. The farmer would then so lay out (and continually adjust) the working components—living quarters, barn, pens, fields, orchard, and lines of connection—as to bring them into best relationship to each other an to the land-water holding. The farmer would plan the whole and each new element in such a way as to conserve and take full advantage of the land’s best features: the ground forms, the woodlot, the spring, the drainageways, the soil, and the natural covers.
Not only is such a farm (state) more productive,
Not only is it more efficient,
Not only is it more agreeable as a place to live and work,
It is also the best possible investment for the farmer, the farmer’s spouse, and their heirs.
Habitat
The land is our terrestrial home not only for the human species but for all living organisms, which together constitute the biomass of the planet Earth.
Ecology has taught us that all organisms and creatures are interacting and interdependent; that all are contributors and have their necessary functions in the biologic scheme of things; that the mountains, forests, marshes, and rivers together form a community without definable limits; and that the integrity of the natural systems must somehow be preserved.
It is only within very recent times that members of the human race have seen fit to claim sole rights in land. This newly acquired compulsion to own land and take a permanent fix has become epidemic. Today, whole regions of the earthscape have been marked off by boundary posts and line fences, only to be further divided and subdivided, again and yet again.
A natural system is a co-related assemblage of topographic, climatic, or ecologic elements interacting in accordance with natural law.
Watersheds, wetlands, coral reefs, meadows, and anthills are examples.
Most such property ownership demarcations have been made on a wholly haphazard, geometric basis, without regard for topographic conformation.
Reason would tell us that if land must be parceled and subdivided (our entire culture seems now to be operating on this premise), new lines of ownership should be brought into consonance with the boundaries of functioning land and water systems.
Not only should our remaining undisturbed land be so apportioned as to express and accommodate the natural form order, but many of the presently fragmented landholdings should be reassembled and more logically defined. City and county limits are examples. Over the ensuing years, through the emerging techniques of surveying, land use planning, zoning, redevelopment, reclamation, and resource management, the mutilated landscape may be restored to fairer form and to a healthful wholeness.
All of North America was occupied, after a fashion, by Indians, whose home it was and who obtained their living from the land.
The Indian concept of landownership was completely different from that of the whites. The Indian regarded land as something to be used and enjoyed, even to be defended against trespassers, but not to be owned exclusively by one person, nor never to be bought and sold in the commercial sense.
When the white man sought to buy land from Indians, the latter might agree and accept a purchase price or gift, yet not understand what the white man meant. It was not simply that the white men drove sharp bargains or the Indians reneged on bargains accepted, though there was some of each; more importantly, there was never a genuine meeting of minds.…
Marion Clawson
In the United States, rights in land have flowed to individuals, corporations, and agencies mainly from government—from colonial powers in earlier times and later by acts of Congress.
Through the century following the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the United States disposed of almost 1 billion acres of land held in public ownership. At first, the more important dispositions were those made to the states in support of public schools and the land-grant colleges. Then followed allotments for wagon roads, canals, and the building of railroads. In the last-named case the entrepreneurs were usually given alternate sections within a broad swath contiguous to the railroad right-of-way. The Homestead Act of 1862 extended rights in land to settlers. Military bounties, Indian rights, and grants to encourage such activities as timber culture, mining, irrigation, and reclamation were to swell the dispositions to date to almost half of the total land area of 50 states.
The United States owned a great deal of land, public and private capital was in short supply, and the need for public improvement was great; why not make public land available to finance the construction of needed public improvements? This was a sound basic idea, which accomplished a great deal of good.…
Marion Clawson
In Alaska today, the land-grant saga continues. From the time of the Alaska Purchase in 1867 until the Alaska Statehood Act of 1958, the federal government owned almost the whole of the territory.
It can be seen that from our country’s beginnings to the present time the dynamics of land transfer, ownership, and use have had profound political, social, and economic implications. The story of land exploration, land hunger, land transactions, regulation, and use (and too often abuse) is the story of America. Land is our ultimate resource. We must plan for its conservation, regulation, and development on a more scientific basis. We must learn to use it more wisely.
The topsoil mantle is teeming with life. Scoop up a handful almost anywhere, and you are holding a cosmos of microscopic organisms and cells of regeneration.
Once in private ownership, land can be readily used or sold as a valued commodity. A factor of use or sale is, of course, the ability to define and prove rights of ownership by clear title to the property. Such proof presupposes a survey and the establishment on the ground of stakes, monuments, or other markings by which the property boundaries can be identified. Further, there must be a means by which a lot or parcel may be so described as to differentiate it from and relate it to all other landholdings. Finally, there is need for a systematic and orderly means of recording land descriptions and titles.
Almost imperceptibly the relationship of society to the land has changed, to a point at which the public good now largely transcends the rights of the individual.
In the United States, by comparison, we are fortunate in our system. In many Latin American countries, for instance, few of these conditions pertain. There, accurate surveys seldom exist; rights in land are often clouded and in dispute, and the systematic recording of titles is not yet a fact of life. Much land has been preempted by squatters, now backed by traditional sentiment in favor of the pioneer and against those who own or believe they own superseding rights to the land. Such vague and chaotic conditions of property ownership lead to a lack of commitment, investment, and improvement by those not certain of established rights and give force to a growing movement toward massive land reform.
The original land survey has left an indelible mark upon those parts of the United States to which it was applied. There was much to commend the system. As Marion Clawson has noted, we are a rectilinear country, divided into squares and oblongs like a haphazard checkerboard, with the lines running directly north-south and east-west.
Diagrammatic system of land surveying.
Roads typically follow the surveyed section lines even though this means going up and down hills instead of around them. Farmers tend to lay out their fields parallel to the boundaries of their land even though this may mean cultivating up and down the slope rather than along the contours. Much erosion has been caused or accelerated in this way. Some land experts, observing these types of bad land use, have been highly critical of the rectilinear land survey and argue for modification.
Land definition by transit and rod. Grant Heilman
Perhaps the time has now come. The crude magnetic surveying instruments and need for range lines cleared through forest and swamps made the mechanical grid quite reasonable in its time. But now, with the advent of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), photogrammetry, laser sighting, computer techniques, coordinates, and electronic traverse computation, it is time for a whole fresh look at the process of land description and measurement. A gradual land resurvey to follow and respond to natural topographical conformation is clearly in order. Governmental regulation could now require that future land surveys and dispositions be based, as appropriate, on more logical parcel boundaries to meet sound land use criteria.
Meandering property lines are easily established.
We Americans, with a seemingly inexhaustible land reserve, have been extremely wasteful. We have claimed, cleared, and too often exploited, then moved on, to do it all over again. It is only now, with open land at a premium, that we have begun to understand the need for husbandry.
There are many examples of land well used—among them, New England villages fitted to the topography, the Amish farmsteads of Pennsylvania, Florida citrus groves, Wisconsin dairy farms, wheat and corn fields of the prairies, ranch lands of the plains, and bean fields, vineyards, and orchards along the west coast—and across the breadth of the land, well-tended homesites and gardens.
We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.…
That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology, but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics.
Aldo Leopold
In the good examples, we may perceive these simple precepts of sound land management:
Learn to read the landscape,
to comprehend the grandeur of its geologic framework,
to understand the vital workings and interdependence of the land and water systems,
to discern in each form and feature the unique expression of nature’s creative process.
Let the land’s nature determine its use. And so address each measure of the landscape as to evoke, through our planning, use, and treatment, its highest qualities and potential.
The carrying capacity of land-water area is the population or level of activity that can be sustained for a given length of time without depletion of the resources or breakdown of the biological (natural) systems.
When land passes from one ownership to another, certain legal rights are transferred with the property. Unless otherwise specified in the deed or governing regulations, these include the right to use, cultivate, mine, perform earthwork, remove the soil or vegetation from the land, or build upon it.
Plan to the land. SWA Group
Running with the land are also certain responsibilities, many firmly established by our land law tradition. It is unlawful, for instance, to cause damage by directing an increased flow of storm-water runoff onto a neighbor’s property. It is not lawful to alter grades significantly along a property line, or to create off-site earth slippage, erosion, or siltation, or to generate undue air, water, noise, or visual pollution. Other more recent restrictions dealing with such matters as wetland protection, beach access, erosion control, and unregulated grading are still to be fully tested in the courts.
Landowners have the responsibility to use their property so as to protect its natural values and cause no harm to neighbors.
Since most sites were acquired in the first place because they were attractive or had other positive qualities, it might well be proposed as a general rule that the less modification, the better. A fundamental principle of landscape design is to “plan to the site,” letting the natural contours, conditions, and covers dictate the building and landscape forms.
Where for one reason or another it may be desirable to alter the grades, as to provide required use areas or to dispose of excavated materials, the topsoil on disturbed areas should first be stripped and stockpiled. The revised contours will then be reshaped to accommodate the proposed uses, to express the meld of natural and constructed elements, and to enhance the building-site composition.
Land is a finite resource. As usable land becomes scarcer, the need to reuse formerly abused land—or brownfields, as they have come to be known as—is clear. Brownfield sites are usually abandoned or underutilized former industrial areas that contain varying degrees of contamination by chemicals and other pollutants. Once these pollutants are removed, the land becomes suitable for other selective uses. These sites are often in close proximity to urban infrastructures, making their location highly desirable. In turn, for many instances, cleanup becomes cost-effective as a result of the increased land value. Examples in the United States include Gas Works Park in Seattle, Washington; Atlanta Station in Atlanta, Georgia; and Pittsburgh Technology Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Recycled brownfield site. Tyrel Sturgeon, Wenk Associates, Inc.
Topography is defined as the art of showing in detail on a major map the physical features of a place or region.
Land areas and the bottoms of water bodies are seldom level. They slope up or down; they undulate; they sometimes pitch precipitously to great heights or depths, and are often creased with streambeds, ravines, or seismic faults.
Contours can be thought of as edges of plateaus. Simon Gurney, www.simongurney.co.uk
Representation by Contours
The shape, or relief, of the ground surface can be indicated by contours. These are lines of equal height above a fixed reference point, or bench mark, of known or assumed elevation. For some engineering projects of exceptional scope or precision, the bench mark will be a permanent monument with machined brass cap—its elevation recorded in hundredths of feet above mean sea level. Again, for a project of lesser scope the bench mark may be no more than the top of a rock or a driven pipe assigned an arbitrary elevation of, say, 100.0 feet.
Where the land gradient is mild, the contour interval or height differential may be reduced. Where the land is rugged, as in mountainous country, the interval may be increased to 10 feet, 100 feet, or more depending upon the need.
It can be seen that by contours alone the modulations of the Earth’s surface can be graphically portrayed. In architectural or landscape planning a site plan prepared with a contour map as a base gives an invaluable feel for the land.
Figure 1 is the plan of a small land area at scale of 1 inch = 100 foot. The dot represents a stone or stake, the top of which has an assumed elevation of 100.0 feet. The X is a spot elevation used to mark a high point, a low point, or some other spot of relevance. The curving contours are lines of equal height at 1-foot intervals above or below the level of the bench mark (BM). The closer together the contours (as along section A-A) the steeper the slope compared with B-B (a valley) or C-C (a ridge).
Figure 1.
Amphitheater seating on contour. Kathryn Gustafson
Illustrative section. Moore Planning Group, LLC
As a further aid, the contour map provides the opportunity to plot sections wherever an accurate land profile is needed. In Figure 2, for example, if section lines are drawn through any area of the map, as at lines A-A, or B-B, a profile can be plotted and enlarged or reduced to any useful scale.
Although Figure 2 shows a larger land area of more topographic diversity, the principle is the same as in Figure 1. A vertical measurement from the intersection of each contour with the baseline gives a series of points which, when connected, show the land profile at lines A-A and B-B.
Figure 2.
Even more graphic than plans or sections is a model prepared by cutting and superimposing sheets of matboard, plywood, or plastic of the appropriate thickness along the contour lines. By means of such an exhibit the surface conformation or modeling of the entire property can be perceived at a glance. Aerial or perspective views of the model in photographic form are often used for ready reference.
Cardboard contour model. Landscapes of Place
It is well to understand that surveying methods and maps are of many types and must be suited to their purpose. As for methods, the compass and chain is good enough for plotting logging roads but hardly suited to precision mapping. The plane table survey may be adequate for a limited site where precisely accurate property line descriptions and elevations are not needed. The stadia survey has long been the standard for accurate topographic mapping, but has recently been superseded by the laser transit. For larger-area coverage, a photogrammetric survey is usually prescribed. This involves the piecing together of overlapping aerial mosaics and the plotting of surface features by stereoptic projection. Commonly used in military reconnaissance, it yields a high degree of precision.
To utilize land for most purposes, a topographic survey is needed. Such a map will show not only the surface conformation by contours and spot elevations, it will also indicate the lines of property ownership, surface and subsurface features, and such other supplemental information as may be specified. Some surveys give no more information than a description in bearings and distances (metes and bounds) of the property perimeter. Often this is all that is required.
If contouring and spot elevations are needed they must be requested. With detailed site planning to be accomplished, the topographic survey specification may be expanded to include the location and description of specific surface and subsurface features. Core borings or test pits may be required and such elements as the adjacent roadway or the nearest off-site utility leads and projected capacities. When a topographic survey is needed, it is well to meet with the surveyor and review the requirements in detail. A specification and work order can then be drafted for execution. For an extensive or complicated development project, the survey specification may be many pages in length. For a typical residential homesite, however, the following sample specification should normally suffice.
Terrace edges simulate contour lines. © Charles Mayer Photography/Stephen Stimson Associates
Topographic Survey Specification
Property: The property to be surveyed is marked on the enclosed location map (to be provided to the surveyor by the owner or landscape architect).
General: Surveyor shall do all work necessary to determine accurately the physical conditions existing on the site.
Datum: Elevations shall be referenced to any convenient and permanent bench mark with an assumed elevation of 100.0 feet. The bench-mark location shall be shown on the map.
Information required:
- Title of survey, property location, scale, north point, certification, and date.
- Tract boundary lines, courses, distances, and coordinates. Calculate and show acreage.
- Building setback lines, easements, and rights-of-way.
- Names of on-site and abutting parcel owners.
- Names and locations of existing streets on or abutting the tract. Show right-of-way, type, location, width of surfacing, and centerline of gutters.
- Position of buildings and other structures, including foundations, piers, bridges, culverts, wells, and cisterns.
- Location of all site construction, including walls, fences, roads, drives, curbs, gutters, steps, walks, trails, paved areas, and so on, indicating types of materials or surfacing.
- Locations, types, sizes, and direction of flow of existing storm and sanitary sewers on the tract, giving top and invert elevations of manholes and inlet and invert elevations of other drainage structures; location, ownership, type and size of water and gas mains, manholes, valve boxes, meter boxes, hydrants, and other appurtenances. Locations of utility poles and telephone lines and fire-alarm boxes are to be indicated. For utilities not traversing the site, show, by key plan if necessary, the nearest off-site leads, giving all pertinent information on types, sizes, inverts, and ownership.
- Location of water bodies, streams, springs, swamps, or boggy areas and drainage ditches or swales.
- Outline of wooded areas. Within areas so noted, show all trees that have a trunk diameter of 4 inches or greater at waist height, giving approximate trunk diameters and common names of the trees.
- Road elevation. Elevations shall be taken at 50-foot intervals and at high or low points along centerlines of roads, flow line of gutter on property side, and tops and bottoms of curbs. The pertinent grades abutting street and road intersections shall also be indicated.
- Ground surface elevations shall be taken and shown on a 50-foot grid system as well as at the top and bottom of all considerable breaks in grade, whether vertical, as in walls, or sloping, as in banks. Show all floor elevations for buildings. Spot elevations shall also be indicated at the finished grade of building corners, building entrance platforms, and all walk intersections. In addition to the elevations required, the map shall show contours at _-foot vertical intervals. All elevations shall be to the nearest tenth of a foot. Permissible tolerance shall be 0.1 foot for spot elevations and one-half of the contour interval for contours.
Aside from the basic topographic, or “topo,” survey prepared by a professional surveyor or civil engineer and needed for most project design and construction, there are other sources of useful maps and reports available at nominal cost. Of these the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) maps warrant special mention.*3 Several series are available, at different scales, but the one most often useful to the planner is the 7.5-minute series, in which each map (or quadrangle, as it is called) covers an area of about 60 square miles at a scale of 1 inch to 2000 feet. These survey maps show most of the pertinent topography of the area, including relief, wooded areas, all bodies of water, transportation routes, and major buildings.
USGS map. USGS
For many counties the Natural Resources Conservation Service (formerly the U.S. Soil Conservation Service) has available published Soil Survey Reports, which include 11- by 14-inch field sheets of aerial photos on which soil types are delineated. These may be purchased at the nearest field office. For the areas covered, they can be most useful. Then there are the various types of coverage by satellite mapping and photography, which for certain localities show surface conditions with startling detail and accuracy.
Planning agencies and highway departments are often able and willing to provide survey information and reports for extensive metropolitan areas. This is especially useful in large-scale comprehensive planning, as for a campus, community, river basin, or park and open-space systems.
Other public agencies also can help with overall background mapping and data, which may be sufficient for site selection and preliminary land use diagrams. When it comes time, however, for detailed site planning and recording there is need for a certified topographic survey.
Digital maps in GIS format are a useful form of mapping used for supplementary data on a project. GIS maps, provided by most local governments through an online system, provide the basic topography, vegetation, waterways, transportation routes, buildings, soils, zoning, floodplains, utilities, easements, aerial photography, zoning restrictions or overlays, and individual lot information. More extensive data files are available from local, state, federal, and private agencies for everything from demographics to geographic and ecological data. Analytical GIS software helps the designer to process multiple layers of data and apply it in the design process.
Data mapping used in the design process. United LAB
*3U.S. Geological Survey maps may often be purchased locally at map or stationery stores, or they may be ordered directly from the main distribution center at USGS Information Services, Box 25286, Denver, CO 80225 (http://geography.usgs.gov/esic/to_order.html). If requested, an index map shows for each state the quadrangle to be ordered for a particular location.