Alberta · Saskatchewan · Manitoba · BC Peace Country
LSD Locator & DLS Lookup
Enter any Dominion Land Survey description — quarter, half, section or LSD — and the locator returns the exact parcel outline and GPS coordinates. Positions are computed from surveyed township corners published by the Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba governments, so results land on the real grid, not an idealized one.
Worked example: 4-12-52-24-W4
A DLS description reads from the smallest unit to the largest: LSD (or quarter) — section — township — range — meridian. Take 4-12-52-24-W4, an LSD in southeast Edmonton:
- 4LSD 4 — Legal subdivision 4 of 16 — the ~40-acre cell at the section's southwest corner (numbering starts at 1 in the southeast and runs west)
- 12Section 12 — Section 12 of 36 in the township, one square mile
- 52Township 52 — 52nd township row north of the 49th parallel — roughly 300 miles north
- 24Range 24 — 24th range column counted west from the 4th meridian
- W44th Meridian — 110°W — the reference line that doubles as the Alberta–Saskatchewan border
The parent section 12-52-24-W4 centres near 53.476038, -113.405612. Sections number 1–36 boustrophedon (back-and-forth) starting at the township's southeast corner; LSDs 1–16 snake the same way inside each section, starting from the section's southeast corner. See how LSD numbering works for the full diagram.
Accepted formats
The parser is flexible: dashes, spaces or slashes between parts, upper or lower case, leading zeros or not. SW 24 68 5 W4, sw-24-068-05-w4 and SW-24-68-5-W4 all resolve to the same quarter.
Quarter section
NE-14-48-1-W5
NE, NW, SE or SW — 160 acres
Half section
WH-6-52-23-W4
NH, SH, EH or WH — 320 acres
Full section
12-52-24-W4
Section–township–range–meridian, one square mile
Legal subdivision (LSD)
4-12-52-24-W4
LSD 1–16 leading — ~40 acres
Provinces covered
The lookup covers the full Dominion Land Survey: Alberta (meridians W4–W6), Saskatchewan (W1–W3), Manitoba (E2, E1 and W1, including ranges east of the Principal Meridian like NE-25-10-5-E1) and British Columbia's Peace River Block (W6). Townships run from the 49th parallel north to roughly township 126. A Saskatchewan example: 19-17-26-W2 resolves to 50.447879, -105.568995, just north of Moose Jaw. Details, meridian by meridian, are on the coverage page.
Results are computed from more than 21,000 townships of surveyed corner coordinates, so they track the monuments on the ground rather than pure grid math. They are navigation and reference grade — not a legal survey.
Looking up land in the field?
The iPhone app runs every DLS/LSD calculation on-device with offline base maps of all four provinces — plus current-location lookup, favourites with notes and navigation handoff, no signal required.
Get Land Description Lookup for iPhoneFrequently asked questions
- What does an LSD number like 4-12-52-24-W4 mean?
- Reading left to right: legal subdivision 4, section 12, township 52, range 24, west of the 4th meridian. Each township holds 36 sections, each section splits into 16 LSDs of about 40 acres, and the meridian anchors the range count — W4 is the 110°W line that forms the Alberta–Saskatchewan border.
- What is the difference between a quarter section and an LSD?
- Both subdivide a one-square-mile section. A quarter (NE, NW, SE or SW) is a 160-acre quadrant, common in farmland and property descriptions. An LSD is a finer 40-acre cell, numbered 1–16 from the southeast corner, used heavily by the energy industry for well and facility locations. Four LSDs make up one quarter.
- Does DLS lookup work in British Columbia?
- Only in the Peace River Block in northeast BC, which was surveyed on the DLS grid (ranges west of the 6th meridian). The rest of British Columbia never had a DLS survey — well locations there use the NTS/BCGS system instead, which this site also supports.
- Is this the same as an LSD finder app?
- Same job, done in the browser: enter an LSD, quarter or section and get the parcel map and GPS coordinates — no install needed. If you want the app version, the Land Description Lookup iPhone app runs the same lookups on-device with offline maps, so it works in the field with no signal.