Legal land description glossary

The Dominion Land Survey is the quarter-section township grid that covers the Canadian Prairies and the BC Peace. A DLS description reads from the quarter outward: quarter, section, township, range, and meridian.

British Columbia describes land using the National Topographic System, a hierarchy of map series, sheets, blocks, units and quarter units rather than a township-and-range grid.

Ontario predates the rectangular Prairie grid. Land is described by lot and concession within a named geographic township and county, rather than by section, township and range.

River lots are the long, narrow riverfront parcels laid out in Manitoba's early settlement surveys, giving many owners access to the river. They differ from both the DLS grid and Ontario's lots and concessions.

The Public Land Survey System is the US township-and-range grid used across 30+ states and 37 principal meridians. A PLSS description reads section, township, range, meridian, state.

Texas never adopted the PLSS. Instead it uses the General Land Office (GLO) survey grid, identifying parcels by abstract number and original survey, with a separate block/section style in the Panhandle.

A quarter section is one quarter of a survey section, about 160 acres. It is the basic unit of ownership in both the Canadian DLS and the US PLSS.

Township and range coordinates locate a survey township on the grid relative to a baseline and a principal meridian.

A principal meridian is the north–south reference line that anchors a survey grid. Range numbers are counted east or west from it.

A section is the basic survey unit of the township grid, about one square mile, or 640 acres. A township contains 36 sections.

An aliquot part is a legal subdivision of a section by repeated halving and quartering, such as the NE¼ or the SW¼ of the NE¼, without a metes-and-bounds survey.

A baseline is the east–west reference line that, together with a principal meridian, anchors a township-and-range survey. Township numbers count north or south of it.

A legal land description is a formal way to identify land using a survey system, such as DLS, PLSS, NTS, Texas abstracts, Ontario lots or Manitoba river lots.

A principal meridian is the north-south reference line used by a township-and-range survey. Range numbers count east or west from it.

A legal subdivision, or LSD, is a 40-acre division of a DLS section. It is common in Canadian oil-and-gas land descriptions.