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cadastral maps — English
Maps that show property boundaries and other administrative boundaries, land registration and tenure information. Private and state properties all over the surveyed world are registered and deeds offices keep all the records and all registration details of the property. Any map that shows these boundaries is a cadastral map. International, district, county, municipal and provincial boundaries are also indicated on these maps. One needs a relatively large scale map (like 1:50 000) to indicate farm boundaries, but no small urban properties can be mapped on that scale. For urban properties, such as those in a certain suburb of a city, a larger scale (like 1:10 000 or preferably 1:1 000) would be needed. Cadastral maps are indispensable for urban planning, service provision, property tax collection, property transactions, solving of boundary and ownership disputes, spatial analyses, geotechnical investigations, environmental impact assessments, and many other purposes. In South Africa we are fortunate to have excellent cadastral map series on different scales. The same cannot be said about most developing countries. Land tenure systems also vary from region to region on Earth. In tribal regions, land registration and cadastral mapping do not apply. In the former USSR, all land belonged to the State, and no cadastral system was even developed until the USSR dissolved in 1991 and private ownership of land became part of their new reality. In the Sahara desert nomadic Bedouins move from oasis to oasis (see “salinisation”) and they do not even know in which country they are at any specific time! But the nomads know which oasis “belongs” to whom, which ones may be used and which should be avoided. So they have no need of cadastral maps to settle these matters. The same applies to many regions such as the Amazonian forests, the Mongolian deserts, the tribal savannahs and grazing lands of East Africa, the barren Patagonian tundra, the high Himalayan ranges, and so forth. In fact, the larger part of the land on Earth is not cadastrally mapped, since there has never been a need for it.
