Today, the professor who oversees the campus herbarium came to ask for help finding proper descriptions for specimens in the herbarium. The materials were collected here in Illinois and in other states, so he needed a resource that worked for the entire country rather than the seamless topos that have to be loaded for each state.

Some people who collected specimens in the herbarium only gave written descriptions rather than formal Section, Township & Range, which is what he wanted for his database. For example, some of the descriptions give a township name (some states have named townships, while others do not) and a section number, while other descriptions are much less specific (west of CITY NAME in section 13 just east of the Oklahoma border). Because he is somewhat visually impaired, he wanted to be able to do the work online rather than pull printed maps.

The National Map Viewer has the solution, but it took some trial & error (and a request for assistance from the National Map Viewer Contact Us page) to get the system to work.

1. PLSS in the National Map Viewer only works when using Internet Explorer, it does NOT work in Firefox or Chrome.

2. Place names can be searched in the search box at the top of the National Map Viewer website (https://viewer.nationalmap.gov/viewer/). Simply enter a place name in the search box at the top of the site (e.g. Chalmers Township IL), to find the location.

3. To turn on PLSS, click on Other Featured Data in the contents area of the National Map Viewer (left side of the page). A list of other data sources is presented, including BLM Public Land Survey System (PLSS). Click in the check box to turn it on. The list of PLSS data can be expanded to turn certain options off (for example, quarter quarter sections).

The professor was able to work with the site to find locations that he was searching for and will continue to work on his database using the site. However, I thought that others might find this information useful.

Linda Zellmer