[Talk-us-massachusetts] Talk-us-massachusetts Digest, Vol 44, Issue 1

[Yury Yatsynovich]

MassGIS has just replied:

"

Yuri: Interesting that you are looking for this data. Believe it or not,
issues and disputes still remain; some get resolved, some don’t. The issues
with waterway boundaries is that in some places, over the years, either man
or mother nature has changed the course. Also, the way things were laid out
in the past, they followed roads or railroad right of ways that were
subsequently moved.



Anyway, the best (and most fascinating) “data” regarding town boundaries is
the https://archives.lib.state.ma.us/handle/2452/47855 Atlases created by
the Harbor and Lands Cmsn around 1900. They are the original statewide
surveys of town boundaries. I think that would have the best
representations you are looking for as far as descriptions; especially if
your interest is in a single (or few) spots.



Let me know if this is not what you were looking for.



Thank you





*Paul Nutting ** |**  Outreach Coordinator-MassGIS*
"

On Fri, May 29, 2020 at 11:01 AM Greg Troxel <gdt at lexort.com> wrote:

> Yury Yatsynovich <yury.yatsynovich at gmail.com> writes:
>
> > Actually, Greg, the link that you provided, mentions the following:
> > "All boundaries that follow a water body or a ROW are coded in the
> > attribute table in the BND_QUAL field" and further on the same page there
> > is "BND_QUAL = 3 = boundary line follows a river or stream center". So,
> one
> > can use the layer TOWNSSERVEY_ARC of the "Community Boundaries (Towns)
> from
> > Survey Point" and values of its BND_QUAL field to see which sections of
> > towns' borders indeed go along the rivers
>
> That sounds like good progress in understanding.  It might still be good
> to ask of massgis when you hear back if that really does mean that if
> the river moves the boundary moves.
>
> The next question is who decides where the river is, and if the intent
> is that they update the database.  And then if they haven't yet, where
> the state government thinks the boundary is.
>
> I suppose really we need a QA process to basically diff the state layer
> against OSM and flag discrepancies for review.
>


-- 
Yury Yatsynovich
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-us-massachusetts/attachments/20200529/e638803c/attachment-0001.htm>