Split the LSD into its five parts — legal subdivision, section, township, range and meridian — then locate the township on the Alberta Township System grid and the 40-acre legal subdivision inside its section. Or skip the arithmetic: type the description into the free lookup below and get coordinates computed from Alberta’s surveyed township corners.
Worked example: 4-12-52-24-W4
An Alberta LSD reads smallest-to-largest: LSD, section, township, range, meridian. Here is how 4-12-52-24-W4 breaks down:
Parse
4
Legal subdivision — the 40-acre square in the section’s southwest corner (LSDs 1–4 run west along the south edge)
12
Section — 1 square mile, on the township’s east edge, second row from the south
52
Township — 51 six-mile townships (about 490 km) north of the 49th parallel
24
Range — 24th six-mile column west of the meridian
W4
Fourth Meridian — 110°W, the Alberta–Saskatchewan border
The result lands in southeast Edmonton. The centre of section 12-52-24-W4 sits near 53.476038, −113.405612, and LSD 4 is the 40-acre square in that section’s southwest corner — its centre about 600 m south and 600 m west (roughly 850 m along the diagonal) of the section centre. The lookup below draws the exact parcel outline and returns its centre coordinates.
Try the lookup
Enter any Alberta LSD, quarter, half or section — for example 4-12-52-24-W4 or NE-14-48-1-W5.
or build it field by field
Converting by hand vs using the tool
You can convert LSD to coordinates by hand — at least approximately — with nothing but the description:
Start at the meridian. W4 is 110°W. Alberta also uses W5 (114°W) and W6 (118°W).
Go north by township. Townships are about 6 miles tall and number northward from the 49th parallel, so the south edge of township 52 is roughly 51 × 6 = 306 miles north of the border — about 53.4°N.
Go west by range. Ranges are about 6 miles wide at the border but narrow northward as the meridians converge. Twenty-four ranges west of 110°W at this latitude works out to roughly 113.4°W.
Find the section.The 36 sections number boustrophedon from 1 at the township’s southeast corner: 1–6 run east to west, 7–12 back west to east, and so on to 36 at the northeast corner. Section 12 is on the east edge, one row up.
Find the LSD. The 16 LSDs snake from the southeast the same way: 1–4 west across the bottom row, 5–8 back east, 9–12 west, 13–16 east across the top. LSD 4 is the southwest corner.
Hand math like this typically lands 50–200 m from the monuments on the ground. Correction lines every four townships, meridian convergence, and the realities of a survey run with chains and transits in the 1880s all pull the real grid away from the ideal one. This site instead warps the grid through the Alberta Township System (ATS) — the province’s published fabric of surveyed corner coordinates — so results follow the fences and road allowances you actually see, typically within tens of metres.
Alberta specifics
Three meridians. Alberta land east of 114°W is W4, between 114°W and 118°W is W5, and west of 118°W is W6.
ATS.The Alberta Township System is the province’s implementation of the Dominion Land Survey, with surveyed coordinates published for the corners of every township (Government of Alberta / AltaLIS).
Townships 1–126. Township 1 borders Montana; the numbering runs to the 60th parallel at the NWT border.
Formats. The tool accepts LSDs (4-12-52-24-W4), quarters (NE-14-48-1-W5), halves (WH-6-52-23-W4) and bare sections (12-52-24-W4).
The same lookup covers Saskatchewan, Manitoba and BC’s Peace River Block, each on its own province’s survey fabric — more than 21,000 townships of surveyed corners in total. Results are for navigation and reference: they are not legal land-survey records and cannot substitute for a survey by a licensed land surveyor. Road access, mineral rights and title boundaries need authoritative records.
Look up LSDs in the field — no signal needed
Land Description Lookup for iPhone runs the same ATS-based conversion entirely on-device, with offline base maps of Alberta, current-location lookup, favourites and navigation handoff for getting to the quarter.
Alberta positions are computed from the Alberta Township System (ATS), Government of Alberta / AltaLIS, under the Open Government Licence – Alberta. Read the full methodology.
