Field Notes

The Plotnode Blog

Rural land planning, drone photogrammetry, ADWR wells, parcel data, and the messy reality of building off-grid in the arid Southwest. From the team building Plotnode and Stronghold Precision Aerials.

I work in the field and got tired of expensive paywalls for maps, so I built my own offline GeoPDF app. The core app is 100% free.

Most people who work with maps in the field—forest road builders, land surveyors, county inspectors, ranchers managing water infrastructure—hit the same wall eventually. You buy a mapping app. You import your own GeoPDFs. Then the subscription renews, the paywall tightens, and

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Offer to Academics - GIS and Municipal Bond Debt

The municipal bond market moves $4 trillion annually. Most of it flows blind. City planners, county assessors, and infrastructure engineers have access to parcel maps, zoning overlays, and ADWR well registries. What they don't have is a unified view of how debt obligations

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Mapping Your Rural Lot Before You Build: 3 GIS Layers That Reveal What the Realtor Won't

Three free public data layers — parcel/zoning, ADWR Wells 55, and USGS elevation + NRCS soils — that tell you more about a rural lot than the listing ever will. Here's how to read them before you offer.

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Want every layer in one view?

Plotnode loads parcel, zoning, ADWR wells, USGS elevation, and NRCS soils into a single 3D view. Plan structures, simulate runoff, flag setback violations — before you commit to the build.

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