Wondering if any of you could help me identify tools to use for a project.
My wife’s family owns 320 acres of mostly undeveloped forested land in Michigan. It is 1/2 of a section, 1/2 mile by a mile. It has 3 houses with several barns and sheds, several lakes and ponds, and a number of 2-track trails running through it. All maps of the property and trails are old, hand drawn, and inaccurate.
We thought it would be a fun project to try to create an accurate map of the property, but neither of us is terribly tech-savvy, nor do we have experience w/ GPS tools. Wondered if any of you had experience with such projects, and could point us in the right direction.
I was thinking of trying to find a good satellite image ot topo map to use as a base. Then hoped I could use a device or app to track us as we walked/rode along trails and around features, then superimpose them on the base image/map. We would like to label things, and then print decent-sized versions to distribute.
I imagine there are several parts to this project, and was hoping you all could help steer us in the right direction.
I used an Android app called OpenGPS once - it will record points and tracks as you move about, and you can export them out to a couple of different file formats that will then import into Google Earth and probably other mapping/geospatial software.
So you could use that to record your movements as you walk parts of the perimeter, or record points of interest within the perimeter.
GPS tracking under cover of trees can be be a struggle though
Do you have available any corner markers? Section corners? Some times the center of a section is marked.
Find something that has Lat/Long coordinates on it and put them on Google Maps or some such.
Take picture and go find a land mark you can walk to and see on the pictures. Now you have a starting point.
Then you can use a GPS unit/app as described above to mark/find more places/things and place them on your new map.
Hopefully, a surveyor who has the equipment can give you some ideas.
When I did this kind of stuff, we had the proper land survey gear, high quality GPS units and took our own aerial mapping photos which depicted ‘as is’ current features. Quad maps and other surveys around the property.
To just add some tracks & feature locations pretty close to where they actually are, A 7.5 minute quad map, a GPS unit of some type and a point that you are sure is the same as in the picture and get ‘close enough’ for a fun day or two of discovery without getting a pro or spending $$$ if it is just for your amusement.
Are you sure the county or state does not have a real plat map on file as would be needed for a land sale or title transfer? Copies are ‘cheap to free’ and might be a way to find corner pins or other real boundary markers.
If you can see the various features in the pictures, then just trace over them in Adobe Illustrator, the open source alternative InkScape, or using whatever tool (technical pen on tracing paper; Sharpie and acetate?) you’d like to use. Use various nearby features (roads, probably) to register the photo with something like a topo map that shows section lines. Gmap4 is a good place to do screen grabs of both aerial imagery and topo maps (choose from the menu at upper right).
If you want to PM me the property description, I’ll see how far I can get in a half-hour this week. The trails will probably be the hardest to discern through the tree cover, so for those you might need to do GPS tracks.
If you can find good aerial imagery, Mr. Downtown’s methods seems the simplest. If the public sources don’t have your property, sometimes private aerial photography companies might. The one I had good luck with was nearmaps, who offers a free trial: Current Aerial Maps Coverage | Nearmap US
There are others too. If you still can’t find any readily-available imagery and you have a budget, you could also consider hiring a drone pilot. They can fly over your property and make a 3D map out of it, which you could then trace as you see fit.
But yeah, you can supplement any of the above with traced GPS routes. That’s how we’ll sometimes make maps for biking and hiking trails, for example. Caltopo.com is a easy to use way to make those maps, allowing you to import GPS trails and such and overlay them on a variety of base maps (aerial, topo, shaded hills, some mix thereof).
We know right where the property is. It is the N half of a quarter section with roads on 2 sides. So it is really easy to identify.
Maybe 15 years ago, I pulled up a Google satellite image, which we printed out. It is easy to see the main lakes/ponds, and most of the buildings. I need to see what is available now.
The thing that is NOT shown is all the trails. Old ones cease to be maintained, and new ones are created. We could freehand them in, but i was hoping I could simply drive around, and have them traced. The majority of the property is forested, tho there are ample open spaces where I could identify GPS “signposts.”
So I’d need an image that could be saved, manipulated, and printed in a decent size and format, which I could superimpose my labels onto. (Need I observe that my wife and I aren’t terribly tech-savvy?) Thought it would be nice to have some mountable maps in each of the houses, and to distribute to family members.
I’ll look into the sites suggested (and IM you, Mr Downtown). We’re in no rush. Just got back, and probably won’t make it back up there until next spring. Thought what we had in mind might be as easy as buying an app (for our oldish Android phones), or GPS unit.
A free, very easy to use photo processing program will be useful. I use PhotoScape. It’s sort of like PhotoShop, but free and easy to use. You can crop, add labels, draw lines, etc… I use it to process and notate satellite images.
Glad to see you found your state GIS photos/maps. I was going to suggest looking at your county assessment website to see if they have GIS maps. Google Earth has google aerial photos, and Bing Maps has different ones, including “birds eye” views.
If you can’t save photos directly from the GIS program/interface, you can use the Snipping Tool built into windows to save images onto your PC.
Would you feel comfortable just linking to the exact area? If we could see where it is exactly, would be easy to see what could be done with it.
For example, if the state GIS maps already show the trails, it would take like 5 minutes to trace them as paths and overlay them on different basemaps.
Sorry if I appeared coy. Haven’t had the time to really spend much time on this, and haven’t figured out how to save and link to the image I want.
Don’t have a property description, but it is the north half of section 24 in Blue Lake Township. The property is to the SE of the intersection of Blue Lake and Raymond roads. From Twin Lake, take Blue Lake Rd N, past Holton-Whitehall Rd. The main lake is called Baxter Lake. The boundaries show up clearly on the Muskegon Cty GIS map. On the satellite view can even see my FIL’s red pickup in front of his house!
Like I said, that GIS satellite image looks like a good base for our purposes, due to the leaf drop. So I’ll need to crop and save that image. I’d estimate that 1/4-1/3 of the trails are visible. My wife could probably freehand the rest of them in with some on-line line drawing tool, and affix labels. Might want to wait until we get back up there to really track all of the trails, tho. Maybe superimpose some topo lines (tho the elevation changes aren’t too drastic.) Figured we’d make 5-10 or so copies, maybe 1’x2’, or maybe larger depending on cost and feasibility.
Eager to see if any of you have any neat insights. Like I said, we’re in no great rush. Thought of this maybe as an x-mas gift for family members, or something to do over the winter.
Yep - that’s it. He also has those 2 little rectangular pieces along Blue Lake Road. Was thinking about selling those off to generate revenue to pay the taxes on the main piece, but never went forward with it.
A PITA? Really? What is so difficult about it? Of course, I KNOW where the property is, so from the initial map, I was able to zoom in and follow roads and such to find it. Then I switched (in the lower left corner) from basemap to aerial view.
That caltopo image was obviously taken in summer. The red lines are curious, as they don’t really seem to correlate with trails, and only represent a few of them. Makes me wonder why THOSE lines were drawn.
Looking forward to messing around with this. Thanks, all!
There are just little UI quirks with it… not worth getting into here. And township / range, wow, I’m just so glad the world uses long-lat instead
As for caltopo, sorry for not explaining it better. The red lines were drawn by me as a demo for what you can do. It’s a map EDITOR service. I overlaid the Muskegon County GIS photo on top of another base layer (google satellite) and then drew lines on top of them. In the upper right menu you can also turn on topo lines, other base layers, etc. and layer them however you want to get the map you want. It can go from super complex and ugly (but why? it’s mostly flat anyway) to a very simple look with something like OpenStreetMaps + the trails that you draw yourself.
And you can change the red to something more trail-like (brown? black?). that’s just the default color.
Thanks, friend. This looks to be a really busy weekend, but I look forward to playing around with this next week.
(Had a great 6 days up there over the last weekend. Were the only people on the place. So nice and peaceful. But now am back to work/home/traffic/responsibilities…)
Have fun! Super jealous If I had that much land, I’d be homesteading the hell out of that thing. Looks like you’re planting a forest out front too… firewood?
