Glossary
82 terms that decide
western land deals.
Water law, hydrology, grid, network, environmental permitting and mineral tenure. Written for someone reading a decree, a utility study or a term sheet right now — not for someone studying the field. These are plain-language explanations, not legal advice.
Water law
17 termsThe legal machinery that decides who gets water when there is not enough.
Adjudication
A court or administrative proceeding that determines and confirms all water rights on a stream system, producing a decree of record.
Basin closure
A state determination that no new water rights will be issued in a basin because existing rights already claim the available supply.
Beneficial use
The recognized purpose a water right is put to — irrigation, municipal, industrial, mining, domestic, livestock, recreation or environmental — which both defines and limits the right.
Call
A senior right holder's demand that junior upstream users stop diverting so the senior right can be satisfied.
Chain of title
The documented sequence of ownership transfers establishing who holds a water right or mineral interest today.
Conjunctive use
The joint management of surface water and groundwater as one connected system rather than two separate supplies.
Curtailment
The administrative shutoff of junior water rights so that senior rights can be satisfied during shortage.
Decree
The court order that confirms a water right's attributes — amount, source, use, point of diversion and priority date.
Designated groundwater basin
An administratively defined area where groundwater withdrawal is restricted or specially managed because the aquifer is stressed.
Diversion
The act of physically removing water from a stream, aquifer or other source for use under a right.
Over-appropriated
A basin in which the total volume of water rights on paper exceeds the water the basin physically produces in a typical year.
Point of diversion
The specific location where water is physically removed from its source under a water right.
Prior appropriation
The western water doctrine under which the earliest user to put water to beneficial use holds the strongest claim, regardless of who owns the land.
Priority date
The date a water right's claim was established, which sets its rank in the queue when supply is short.
Transfer
The state-approved process of changing a water right's owner, use, point of diversion or place of use.
Water right
A legal entitlement to divert and use a specified quantity of water from a specified source for a specified purpose.
WDID
Colorado's identifier for a water structure, joining a physical diversion work to its decrees, administration and call records.
Hydrology & supply
16 termsThe physical measurements behind every water claim.
Acre-foot
The volume of water covering one acre to a depth of one foot — 325,851 gallons, and the standard unit for storage and annual supply.
Aquifer
A subsurface formation saturated with water and permeable enough to yield it to wells.
Carryover storage
Water held in a reservoir at the end of a season and carried into the next, buffering supply across dry years.
CFS (cubic feet per second)
The standard rate unit for water flow in the West — one cubic foot of water passing a point each second.
Depth to water
The distance from the ground surface down to the water table in a well — the measurement that reveals whether an aquifer is holding or declining.
Drought classification
The weekly US Drought Monitor severity scale running from D0 (abnormally dry) to D4 (exceptional drought).
Groundwater
Water held beneath the surface in aquifers, accessed by wells and governed by a separate regulatory regime from surface water in most states.
HUC (hydrologic unit code)
The USGS numbering system that nests watersheds from large regions (HUC2) down to subbasins (HUC8) and smaller.
Percent of median
A measurement expressed against its own historical median for the same date — the standard way snowpack and flow are compared year to year.
Produced water
Water brought to the surface as a byproduct of oil and gas production, typically saline and requiring treatment or disposal.
Runoff
The water that reaches streams from precipitation and snowmelt — the annual supply a basin actually produces.
Snow water equivalent (SWE)
The amount of water contained in a snowpack — how much you would get if it melted right now.
Streamflow
The volume of water moving past a point in a river per unit time, measured at gauging stations and reported in CFS.
TDS (total dissolved solids)
The concentration of dissolved minerals in water, which determines whether it can be used directly or requires treatment.
Watershed
The land area that drains to a common outlet — the natural unit water supply is measured and managed in.
Wet water
Water that physically exists and can actually be diverted, as opposed to the volume a right entitles you to on paper.
Power & grid
10 termsInterconnection, capacity and the vocabulary of getting electrons to a site.
Behind-the-meter
Generation located on the customer's side of the utility meter, serving the facility directly rather than through the grid.
Fuel mix
The composition of generating sources serving a grid region — the number behind any clean-energy claim about a site.
Interconnection
The process and physical works by which a new load or generator connects to the electric grid.
Interconnection queue
The ordered list of projects awaiting studies and approval to connect to the grid, now measured in years across most western regions.
Interstate pipeline
A natural gas pipeline crossing state lines, federally regulated, and generally the highest-capacity gas infrastructure available to a site.
kV (kilovolt)
The unit of transmission voltage — higher kV lines carry more power further with lower losses.
Load
The electrical demand a facility places on the grid, expressed in megawatts.
Megawatt (MW)
One million watts — the standard unit for generating capacity and large facility demand.
Nameplate capacity
The maximum rated output of a generating unit under ideal conditions, as opposed to what it actually produces on average.
Point of interconnection
The specific physical location where a facility connects to the transmission or distribution system.
Network & fiber
7 termsConnectivity terms that decide whether a remote site is viable.
Carrier diversity
The presence of multiple independent network providers serving a site, on physically separate routes.
Carrier hotel
A colocation facility where many carriers terminate fiber, making it a natural interconnection and peering point.
Dark fiber
Installed but unlit fiber strands leased to a customer who provides their own optical equipment.
IXP (internet exchange point)
A shared facility where multiple networks interconnect and exchange traffic directly.
Latency
The round-trip delay between a user and a facility, driven largely by fiber distance and the number of network hops.
Lit building
A building already served by active fiber, as opposed to one requiring a new construction build.
Peering
The direct exchange of traffic between networks, usually at an internet exchange, bypassing paid transit.
Environmental & permitting
19 termsThe designations and statutes that set project schedules.
Clean Water Act
The federal statute governing discharges to surface waters, administered largely through NPDES permits and Section 404.
Critical habitat
Area formally designated under the Endangered Species Act as essential to the conservation of a listed species.
Endangered Species Act (ESA)
The federal statute protecting listed threatened and endangered species and the habitat they depend on.
GAP status
A four-tier classification of land protection, where 1 and 2 are managed for biodiversity, 3 permits multiple use, and 4 carries no protection mandate.
Induced seismicity
Earthquakes triggered by human activity, most commonly deep wastewater injection associated with oil and gas production.
Jurisdictional wetland
A wetland that falls under federal Clean Water Act authority, and therefore under permitting requirements.
Liquefaction
The loss of soil strength during shaking, when saturated loose sediment temporarily behaves as a liquid.
Magnitude
The logarithmic measure of earthquake energy release, where each whole number represents roughly 32 times more energy.
Mitigation
Measures required to offset a project's environmental impacts — avoidance, minimization, or compensation such as credits or restoration.
Multiple use
The federal land management doctrine directing agencies to manage public land for a combination of uses including recreation, grazing, minerals, timber and watershed.
NPDES permit
The Clean Water Act permit authorizing a facility to discharge pollutants to surface water under specified limits and monitoring.
PGA (peak ground acceleration)
The maximum ground acceleration expected at a site, expressed as a fraction of gravity, and the primary input to seismic design.
Public land
Land owned by federal, state or local government — a majority of the surface in several western states.
Quaternary fault
A fault with evidence of movement within roughly the last 2.6 million years, treated as potentially active for seismic design.
Right-of-way
The legal authorization to cross land with linear infrastructure such as a transmission line, pipeline or fiber route.
Section 404 permit
The Clean Water Act permit required to discharge dredged or fill material into waters of the United States, including many wetlands.
Section 7 consultation
The federal interagency review required when an action with federal involvement may affect a listed species or its critical habitat.
Seismic design category
The building-code classification, driven by expected ground motion and soil conditions, that determines structural requirements at a site.
Significant noncompliance
An EPA designation for facilities with serious or chronic violations of their permit conditions.
Minerals & land tenure
9 termsClaims, leases and the split between surface and what is under it.
Commodity
The specific mineral or metal a deposit or claim targets — gold, silver, copper, lithium, uranium and others.
Held by production
A lease that continues indefinitely beyond its primary term as long as the well or mine keeps producing in paying quantities.
Lease term
The defined period during which a mineral lease is valid absent production, after which it expires and the acreage becomes available again.
Location date
The date a mining claim was staked, establishing its priority against competing claims on the same ground.
Lode claim
A mining claim on federal land covering minerals in place in a vein or rock formation.
Mineral estate
The ownership interest in the minerals beneath a parcel, separable from and generally dominant over the surface estate.
MRDS
The USGS database of mineral occurrences, prospects and producing mines across the United States.
Placer claim
A mining claim covering minerals in loose material such as gravel or alluvium rather than in hard rock.
Split estate
A property where surface ownership and mineral ownership are held by different parties.
Platform & methodology
4 termsHow SubSurface Intel scores, indexes and serves the data.
Composite score
A single suitability number derived from multiple weighted dimensions, presented alongside the components that produced it.
H3 hex grid
A hierarchical hexagonal grid system that divides the earth into uniform cells at multiple resolutions.
Land mask
A filter excluding water bodies and other non-developable surfaces from scored analysis.
Site selection
The structured process of screening, ranking and validating candidate locations against a defined set of constraints.
Every term maps to real data
Priority dates, snow water equivalent, GAP status and interconnection voltage are not abstractions here — each is a field on a layer you can turn on and query.