For the purposes of this chapter, the term, practice of land surveying, means the practice or offering to practice professional services such as consultation, investigation, testimony evaluation, land-use studies, planning, mapping, assembling, interpreting reliable scientific measurements and information relative to the location, size, shape, or physical features of the earth, improvements on the earth, the space above the earth, or any part of the earth, and utilization and development of these facts and interpretation into an orderly survey map, plan, report, description, or project.

The practice of land surveying includes any of the following:

Terms Used In South Dakota Codified Laws 36-18A-4

  • Property: includes property, real and personal. See South Dakota Codified Laws 2-14-2
  • Testimony: Evidence presented orally by witnesses during trials or before grand juries.

(1) Locates, relocates, establishes, reestablishes, lays out, or retraces any property line or boundary of any tract of land or any road, right-of-way, easement, alignment, or elevation of any of the fixed works embraced within the practice of land surveying;

(2) Makes any survey for the subdivision of any tract of land;

(3) Determines, by the use of principles of land surveying, the position for any survey monument or reference point; or sets, resets, or replaces any such monument or reference point;

(4) Determines the configuration or contour of the earth’s surface or the position of fixed objects on the earth’s surface by measuring lines and angles and applying the principles of mathematics;

(5) Geodetic surveying which includes surveying for determination of the size and shape of the earth utilizing angular and linear measurements through spatially oriented spherical geometry; or

(6) Creates, prepares, or modifies electronic or computerized data, including land formation systems and geographic information systems, relative to the performance of the activities in subdivisions (1) to (5), inclusive, of this section.

Source: SL 1999, ch 195, § 4; SL 2016, ch 195, § 1.