Land and Mineral Use Records

About Land and Mineral Use Records

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is responsible for cadastral survey, land and mineral use authorization, and resource management of the public lands. In support of the development of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure, the BLM was given the lead by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB Circular A-16) for Public Land Conveyance, Federal Land Ownership Status, and Cadastral Survey. To meet these goals, the BLM is providing the public with mapping capabilities to our land and minerals use authorization and mining claim record data.

Where does the data come from?

GeoCommunicator is the publication web site for the BLM’s National Integrated Land System (NILS). GeoCommunicator provides the public and the BLM searching, accessing, and dynamic mapping of data for federal land stewardship, land & mineral records and land survey information.

The data for this application comes from the BLM's National Integrated Land System (NILS) and the BLM's Land and Mineral Recordation System, called Legacy Rehost 2000, or LR2000 (www.blm.gov/lr2000).

NILS is a joint development project between the BLM and U.S. Forest Service (USFS) conducted in partnership with states, counties, and private industry to provide a comprehensive solution to integrate survey data with parcel-based land records in an enterprise GIS environment. As part of the BLM’s E-Government efforts and with the development of NILS, spatially displaying parcel data from many of the BLM’s computer applications has become a reality.

NILS consists of two environments: 1) a transactional side, in which cadastral data and land records data are captured, analyzed, edited, and committed to permanent records, and 2) a publication side, GeoCommunicator.

The BLM's Land and Mineral Recordation System, called Legacy Rehost 2000, or LR2000 (www.blm.gov/lr2000) is a text-based case recordation system for processing and recording information on leases, permits, contracts, grants, agreements, land/mineral patents, and other use authorizations issued by the BLM for the U.S. excluding Alaska. The LR2000 system also includes unpatented mining claim records. Information about patented mining claims or any other federal land patents issued prior to 1982 can be found on the Federal Land Records Patent Site or LR2000. Use authorizations are issued to the public for commodities and uses such as oil and gas, coal, sand, gravel, grazing, communication sites, and roads.

The land and mineral case information from the BLM's LR2000 System is being converted into the NILS geodatabase format for spatial display and query. The NILS data is then processed into the GeoCommunicator publication geodatabase for distribution, display, and query by the public. Not all the cases from LR2000 are available in GeoCommunicator. Please read our disclaimer for more information.

Overview of LR2000 Systems

The BLM's LR2000 Case Recordation System contains current and historical information on use authorizations issued by the BLM on federal actions affecting public lands of the United States. Information on the use authorization includes customer data, location, date of issuance, the actions that have taken place, and other applicable information.

The LR2000 system contains the following subsystems:

Case Recordation contains current and historical information on leases, permits, contracts, grants, agreements, land/mineral patents, etc. issued by the BLM on federal actions affecting public lands of the United States. Authorizations are issued for the following activities: oil and gas, coal and other minerals, sand, gravel, rights-of-ways, land exchanges and acquisitions, land use withdrawals, mineral patents, land classifications, land claims, land sales, etc. Information on the use authorization includes customer data, location, date of issuance, the actions that have taken place, and other applicable information. Data concerning all land and mineral use cases on GeoCommunicator except for mining claims come from the Case Recordation system.

Mining Claim Recordation contains information on unpatented mining claims located on federal lands including claimant name, approximate location, and other applicable information. Mineral patents are not contained in Mining Claim Recordation. Mining claims data on GeoCommunicator comes from the Mining Claim Recordation system.

Status System was a project to collection all of the title transfer documents and land withdrawals and classifications into a computerized system. The system contains historical records until the early 1990s. Some examples of data contained within the Status system are:

Land Classifications for Recreation & Public Purpose, power sites, etc.
Land Withdrawals for the National Forest, National Park Service (NPS), National Monuments, reclamation and other uses.
Land Title Transfer for homesteads, sales, exchanges, mineral entry patents, etc.

What Are Cases That Affect Land Status or CTALS?

Cases That Affect Land Status (CTALS) is a set of records displayed in GeoCommunicator's Land and Mineral system that have been converted from the LR2000 Status system that affect the land ownership and status. They include such things as land grants, land exchanges, land withdrawals, mineral patents, land disposals, etc. Eventually, CTALS will also get information from the Case Recordation system. We have just begun to convert records for the CTALS system which eventually will allow us to derive land status. The Federal Surface Management Agency layer that we display in Federal Land Stewardship and in the other GeoCommunicator applications is the online product we offer showing federal ownership. BLM State Offices offer Master Title Plats and Historical Index for more information.

Please read the following disclaimer:

The graphical display of land and mineral parcels and mining claims are NOT a substitute for the official BLM or county land and mineral records. Not all land and mineral records are displayed in this system. There could be land and mineral records and mining claims that occur on the lands but are not displayed on the map you are viewing. Please refer to the LR2000 system for a complete list of land and mineral records. See 'What's New' for more information.

The parcels can be used for information, mapping, graphics, and planning purposes only. No warranty, including accuracy, relevancy, timeliness, or completeness of the records, is made by the BLM for use of the data for purposes not intended by BLM.

What has been converted?

Data from LR2000 is being converted into the NILS system for spatial display and query. Most of the information from the LR2000 system is available in GeoCommunicator. For the latest list of record types available, check the "What's New" section of this web site.

We are converting the data by the type of case and the type of land description.
Authorizations and mining claims are continually being added, as more data are converted to the NILS geodatabase. There are millions of records in the system and many case types to be converted. This process will take time.

Currently, the data on the site is static as of the last update date (see "What's New" section for details). The data is updated every 2-3 weeks. Our goal is to make this system transaction based in the future, displaying LR2000 transactions updated on a more regular basis.

Some cases can't be converted

Not all cases can be converted from the LR2000 for the following reasons:

We don't have a land description in NILS to display the case. We use the land descriptions in NILS to create the geometry for the case based on the case land description.
The land description on the case is complex, missing, or bad.
We haven't converted the land survey type yet.

Note: In some cases only a portion of the land for a case has been converted. In these situations, not all land is displayed and a flag is set to note that the case has only a partial geometry.

For access to all BLM case data use the LR2000 system.

Help:

For more information on the National Integrated Land System (NILS), please visit our NILS Website.