Finding your way around southern Manitoba requires that you be able to read legal descriptions. A custom GIS map can be extremely helpful, so here’s one way of finding a given quarter section in southern Manitoba using GIS. I find it useful for most of our agricultural consulting work.
Download Manitoba Land Initiative’s Quarter Section Grid – Southern Manitoba – GIS. I’m using the All area polygons (1-9) combined version. This provides you with a shapefile with most of the quarter sections in southern Manitoba. For some reason, there are holes in the data. Some are related to river lots, urban areas, and lakes. I’m baffled by some of the other gaps, just be aware that this is not complete coverage.
I’ve written up a little Arcview Script which I bind to a View button. Add the dlsgrid_parcel.shp shapefile to the view, select it and activate it, then click the button. It will ask you for quarter, section, township, range, and meridian then zoom in on that quarter. It’s a useful mapping tool, but due to the gaps in the coverage it’s not perfect. Also it does not deal with river lots at all.
' Search For Quarters
theVTab = av.GetActiveDoc.GetThemes.Get(0).GetFTab
theQtrString = MsgBox.Input("Enter the Quarter", "Quarter", "")
theSecString = MsgBox.Input("Enter the Section", "Section (01)", "")
theTwpString = MsgBox.Input("Enter the Township", "Township (001)", "")
theRgeString = MsgBox.Input("Enter the Range", "Range (01)", "")
theMerString = MsgBox.Input("Enter the Meridian", "Range (E1)", "")
'MsgBox.Info(theQtrString, "The Quarter String is ")
theQueryString = "([Qs_value]=("+theQtrString.Quote+"))" + "AND ([Sectionnum]=("+theSecString.Quote+"))" + "AND ([Twp_num]=("+theTwpString.Quote+"))"+ "AND ([Rangevalue]=("+theRgeString.Quote+"))"+ "AND ([Meridian]=("+theMerString.Quote+"))"
theVTab.Query(theQueryString, theVTab.GetSelection, #VTAB_SELTYPE_NEW)
theVTab.UpdateSelection
av.GetProject.SetModified(true)
theView = av.GetActiveDoc
r = Rect.MakeEmpty
for each t in theView.GetActiveThemes
if (t.CanSelect) then
r = r.UnionWith(t.GetSelectedExtent)
end
end
if (r.IsEmpty) then
return nil
elseif ( r.ReturnSize = (0@0) ) then
theView.GetDisplay.PanTo(r.ReturnOrigin)
else
theView.GetDisplay.SetExtent(r.Scale(1.1))
end
theView.GetDisplay.SetExtent(r.Scale(8))
{ 2 } Comments
I’m interested in obtaining this quarter section grid as well. How do you get an account so you can download the data files? Their website is somewhat lacking.
They don’t go out of their way to make it easy.
Go to https://mli2.gov.mb.ca// There is a Register for MLI link there. Read and agree to the terms of service and you’ll be able to make an account for access to the data.
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