The Public Land Survey System Work Group was recently acknowledged by UW-Madison for outstanding community-engaged collaboration in embodiment of the Wisconsin Idea.
In the public sector, governments administer and make policy through the creation of and maintenance of land records that are associated with a parcel of land. Thus the parcel is often the basic administrative unit of local government. In Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Land Information Program (WLIP) has been a key source of funding facilitating ever more complete digital parcel mapping at the county level.
Interim report of the V1 Statewide Parcel Map Database Project (V1 Project). The V1 Project is a collaboration between the State Cartographer’s Office, the Wisconsin Land Information Program (WLIP), and local governments. This report describes the V1 Project, part of the Statewide Parcel Map Initiative established by Act 20 of 2013.
GIS parcel data in Wisconsin is created and maintained at both the municipal and county levels. For the majority of Wisconsin counties, parcel data is regularly aggregated from municipal to county-wide datasets if the parcels are not originally created by the county. Some exceptions to this include the Cities of Eau Claire, Beloit, Antigo, and Janesville, where parcel data remains available only at the municipal level. There are also areas of the state that are not yet digitally parcel mapped.
Plat books make use of the Public Land Survey System to represent land ownership patterns on a county-by-county basis. They are a convenient reference for local governments, private realty, surveying companies, and the general public. Commercial plat books for Wisconsin are generally prepared by private map publishing companies in conjunction with county governments. However, many Wisconsin counties have begun to produce and update the maps themselves.
