The National Conservation Easement Database (NCED) is the first national database of conservation easement information, compiling records from land trusts and public agencies throughout the United States. This public-private partnership brings together national conservation groups, local and regional land trusts, and local, state and federal agencies around a common objective. This effort helps agencies, land trusts, and other organizations plan more strategically, identify opportunities for collaboration, advance public accountability, and raise the profile of what’s happening on-the-ground in the name of conservation.For an introductory tour of the NCED and its benefits check out the story map.

The California Conservation Easement Database (CCED) contains lands protected under conservation easements. It is a parallel data set to the California Protected Areas Database (CPAD), which covers protected areas owned in fee. The first version of the CCED database was released in April 2014, the latest update is from December 2024.

CCED is maintained and published by GreenInfo Network (www.greeninfo.org). GreenInfo Network publishes CCED twice annually.

The National Conservation Easement Database (NCED) is a collaborative venture to compile easement records (both spatial and tabular) from land trusts and public agencies throughout the United States in a single, up-to-date, sustainable, GIS compatible, online source. The goal of the NCED is to provide a comprehensive picture of the privately owned conservation easement lands, recognizing their contribution to America's natural heritage, a vibrant economy, and healthy communities. Conservation easements are legal agreements voluntarily entered into between landowners and conservation entities (agencies or land trusts) for the express purpose of protecting certain societal values such as open space or vital wildlife habitats. In some cases landowners transfer "development rights" for direct payment or for federal and state tax benefits.

A conservation easement, according to the Land Trust Alliance, is “a legal agreement between a landowner and a land trust or government agency that permanently limits uses of the land in order to protect its conservation values.” The National Conservation Easement Database (NCED) is the first national database of conservation easements in the United States. Voluntary and secure, the NCED respects landowner privacy and will not collect landowner names or sensitive information. This public-private partnership brings together national conservation groups, local and regional land trusts, and state and federal agencies around a common objective. The NCED provides a comprehensive picture of the estimated 40 million acres of privately owned conservation easement lands, recognizing their contribution to America’s natural heritage, a vibrant economy, and healthy communities.

Before the NCED was created no single, nationwide system existed for sharing and managing information about conservation easements. By building the first national database and web site to access this information, the NCED helps agencies, land trusts, and other organizations plan more strategically, identify opportunities for collaboration, advance public accountability, and raise the profile of what's happening on-the-ground in the name of conservation.

With the initial support of the U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities, NCED is the result of a collaboration between five environmental non-profits: The Trust for Public Land, Ducks Unlimited, Defenders of Wildlife, Conservation Biology Institute, and NatureServe.

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description: These data area an extraction from the National Conservation Easement Database (NCED) by the boundaries of the Colorado Plateau Ecoregion study area. The National Conservation Easement Database (NCED) is the first national database of conservation easement information, compiling records from land trusts and public agencies throughout the United States. This public-private partnership brings together easement information from national conservation groups, local and regional land trusts, and state and federal agencies. NCED is limited to the continental U.S., Alaska, and Hawaii. It does not include conservation easement data for U.S. territories at this time. The NCED dataset portrays the nation's conservation easements with a standardized spatial geometry and numerous valuable attributes on land ownership, management designations, and conservation status (using national GAP coding systems). The database represents the full range of conservation designations for conservation easements in the United States. Our database does not distinguish a protection threshold above which biodiversity is considered secure. Instead, a complete suite of conservation easement attributes are provided for each polygon with the purpose of giving users the information they need to define the most relevant conservation thresholds for their own objectives and requirements. Collaborating with the nation's leading data providers, the goal is to provide regular updates.; abstract: These data area an extraction from the National Conservation Easement Database (NCED) by the boundaries of the Colorado Plateau Ecoregion study area. The National Conservation Easement Database (NCED) is the first national database of conservation easement information, compiling records from land trusts and public agencies throughout the United States. This public-private partnership brings together easement information from national conservation groups, local and regional land trusts, and state and federal agencies. NCED is limited to the continental U.S., Alaska, and Hawaii. It does not include conservation easement data for U.S. territories at this time. The NCED dataset portrays the nation's conservation easements with a standardized spatial geometry and numerous valuable attributes on land ownership, management designations, and conservation status (using national GAP coding systems). The database represents the full range of conservation designations for conservation easements in the United States. Our database does not distinguish a protection threshold above which biodiversity is considered secure. Instead, a complete suite of conservation easement attributes are provided for each polygon with the purpose of giving users the information they need to define the most relevant conservation thresholds for their own objectives and requirements. Collaborating with the nation's leading data providers, the goal is to provide regular updates.

Important Note: This item is in mature support as of July 2024 and will be retired in December 2026. A new version of this item is available for your use. Esri recommends updating your maps and apps to use the new version.

A conservation easement is legal agreement between a landowner and a land trust or government that constrains the landowner’s use of the land in order to achieve a conservation goal. The National Conservation Easement Database (NCED) is a compilation of easement records gathered from land trusts and public agencies within the United States. The information contained in the NCED database provides critical information for planners and managers regarding conservation and development issues.Dataset Summary This layer is represents conservation easement areas from the National Conservation Easement Database covering the United States, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Conservation easements are legal agreements between landowners and conservation entities (units of government or land trusts) for the purpose of protecting specified areas for such reasons as open space or wildlife habitats. The information contained in the NCED database will provide critical information for planners and managers regarding conservation and development issues.Link to source metadataWhat can you do with this layer?The vector features for this layer can be used for visualization and analysis in ArcGIS. The features in this layer are only visible at scales larger than 1:147,914,382. The features can also be downloaded for use with ArcGIS Desktop with the Extract Landscape Source Data tool.This layer is part of a larger collection of landscape layers that you can use to perform a wide variety of mapping and analysis tasks.

*The data for this dataset is updated daily. The date(s) displayed in the details section on our Open Data Portal is based on the last date the metadata was updated and not the refresh date of the data itself.*This is a layer containing all of the submitted municipal, county, state, and federally owned conservation easement polygons within the state of Florida.

The California Conservation Easement Database (CCED) contains lands protected under conservation easements. It is a parallel data set to the California Protected Areas Database (CPAD), which covers protected areas owned in fee. The first version of the CCED database was released in April 2014, the latest update is from June 2024. CCED is maintained and published by GreenInfo Network (www.greeninfo.org). GreenInfo Network publishes CCED twice annually.

Data is from file=CCED_2019_Release_20191212_wmCCED is a GIS database defining easements and deed-based restrictions on private land. These restrictions limit land uses to those compatible with maintaining it as open space. Lands under easement may be actively farmed, grazed, forested, or held as nature reserves. Easements are typically held on private lands with no public access.CCED represents California in the National Conservation Easement Database (NCED), a national inventory of lands conserved as easements. NCED is managed by a consortium of non-governmental organizations including: Ducks Unlimited, the Trust for Public Land, Defenders of Wildlife, Conservation Biology Institute, and NatureServe. CCED Includes Easements Held By:Land trusts and nonprofit organizationsLocal jurisdictions (city and county)State and national governmental agenciesCCED DocumentationUser Manual – Download the CCED User ManualEasement Data Policy – Read The ReportCCED Does Not Include or Address:Information on private land owners (name, address, etc)Temporary easements (less than 10 years)Which portions of a property are subject to the easement

The mission of the USGS Gap Analysis Program (GAP) is providing state, regional and national assessments of the conservation status of native vertebrate species and natural land cover types and facilitating the application of this information to land management activities. The PAD-US geodatabase is required to organize and assess the management status (i.e. apply GAP Status Codes) of elements of biodiversity protection. The goal of GAP is to 'keep common species common' by identifying species and plant communities not adequately represented in existing conservation lands. Common species are those not currently threatened with extinction. By identifying their habitats, gap analysis gives land managers and policy makers the information they need to make better-informed decisions when identifying priority areas for conservation. In cooperation with UNEP-World Conservation Monitoring Centre, GAP ensures PAD-US also supports global analyses to inform policy decisions by maintaining World Database for Protected Areas (WDPA) Site Codes and data for International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) categorized protected areas in the United States. GAP seeks to increase the efficiency and accuracy of PAD-US updates by leveraging resources in protected areas data aggregation and maintenance as described in "A Map of the Future", published following the PAD-US Design Project (July, 2009). While PAD-US was originally developed to support the GAP Mission stated above, the dataset is robust and has been expanded to support the conservation, recreation and public health communities as well. Additional applications become apparent over time.

This is a MD iMAP hosted service. Find more information at http://imap.maryland.gov. The Maryland Department of Natural Resources (DNR) manages over 446 - 000 acres of public lands and protected open space in the state. The DNR Lands data (part of Technology Toolbox Protected Lands data set) consists of mapped information that represent those lands that are owned by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.Utilizing various land protection programs and funding sources - the Maryland Department of Natural Resources has preserved environmentally important lands through the use of perpetual conservation easements. The Forest Legacy Program is designed to identify and protect environmentally important forest lands that are threatened by present or future conversion to non-forest use through the use of perpetual conservation easements between willing sellers and willing buyers. Only private forest land in a Forest Legacy Area is eligible for the program. Marylands Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program (CREP) has helped thousands of Maryland landowners plant streamside buffers - establish wetlands - protect highly erodible land - and create wildlife habitat. The State of Maryland has entered into a memorandum of Agreement with USDA authorizing the State of Maryland to continue the voluntary program for the purchase of perpetual easements for Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) land. A perpetual CREP easement is a written legal agreement between a landowner and the State of Maryland in which there is an acquired permanent interest in the land to install or maintain conservation practices that protect water quality and natural resources. The Maryland Department of Natural Resources (DNR) administers the CREP easement program. DNR is also assisted by a number of local governments and non-government organization sponsors. Last Updated: 05/2014Feature Service Link:http://geodata.md.gov/imap/rest/services/Environment/MD_ProtectedLands/FeatureServer/0 ADDITIONAL LICENSE TERMS: The Spatial Data and the information therein (collectively "the Data") is provided "as is" without warranty of any kind either expressed implied or statutory. The user assumes the entire risk as to quality and performance of the Data. No guarantee of accuracy is granted nor is any responsibility for reliance thereon assumed. In no event shall the State of Maryland be liable for direct indirect incidental consequential or special damages of any kind. The State of Maryland does not accept liability for any damages or misrepresentation caused by inaccuracies in the Data or as a result to changes to the Data nor is there responsibility assumed to maintain the Data in any manner or form. The Data can be freely distributed as long as the metadata entry is not modified or deleted. Any data derived from the Data must acknowledge the State of Maryland in the metadata.

This data set contains easement details and descriptions for Easements in Utah as reported by the National Conservation Easement Database.

The New England Protected Open Space dataset maintained by Harvard Forest is a compilation of existing open space datasets in the New England region including The Nature Conservancy's Secured Areas, National Conservation Easement Database, Protected Areas Database of the U.S., and data provided by states and land trusts. See metadata for each version for version-specific information and information about fields.

Version 1.2 was developed between May 2021 and March 2022, and was published in March 2023. Version 1.2 has new data from multiple sources added circa May 2021, more complete attribute information, and tribal lands removed. See metadata for more details. File geodatabase and shapefile versions are provided - refer to metadata for full field names if using shapefile version, as names will be truncated.

Important note about versions of NE POS: NE POS is a dataset we maintain for research purposes, and research projects can take varying lengths of time. Versions of NE POS may be uploaded to Zenodo "out of order," meaning older versions of data may be uploaded after more recent versions have been published. Use the version number to identify the recency of the data rather than the date of upload.

This data set contains all of the current parcels that are currently in a conservation easement in Albemarle County. Parcels under conservation easement may be subject to certain development restrictions.

Holders of these conservation easements include (but may not be limited to): Virginia Outdoors Foundation (VOF) The Nature Conservancy (TNC) Piedmont Environmental Council (PEC) Thomas Jefferson Soil and Water Conservation Distr Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation Virginia Department of Historic Resources (DHR) Albemarle County PRFA (includes RPDs) Albemarle County ACE

NOTE: 1) Some parcels are only partially within a conservation easement, yet it may not be known which portion of the parcel is in a conservation easement therefore, the entire parcel may be mapped as being within a conservation easement.

2) There may be more than one parcel ID for a given parcel polygon, therefore, the parcel IDs listed in this data layer may not truly show all of the applicable parcel IDs,

3) Some parcels may be under more than one easement (multiple easement holders), therefore, we do not show which easement holder applies to a given parcel. To determine the easement holder(s) for a given parcel, the referencing the official conservation easement database (maintained by CDD-Planning) will be necessary..

The layer includes local, state, and federal parks and other types of protected lands in Hampton Roads, Virginia. Other protected lands include conservation easements, mitigation banks, National Estuarine Research Reserves, and historic conservation easements. The layer was created by assembling data from a variety of sources, including Virginia DCR's Conservation Lands database and the National Conservation Easement Database. It is updated as needed. Last update: July 2018.

NOTE: A more current version of the Protected Areas Database of the United States (PAD-US) is available: PAD-US 3.0 https://doi.org/10.5066/P9Q9LQ4B. The USGS Protected Areas Database of the United States (PAD-US) is the nation's inventory of protected areas, including public land and voluntarily provided private protected areas, identified as an A-16 National Geospatial Data Asset in the Cadastre Theme (https://communities.geoplatform.gov/ngda-cadastre/). The PAD-US is an ongoing project with several published versions of a spatial database including areas dedicated to the preservation of biological diversity, and other natural (including extraction), recreational, or cultural uses, managed for these purposes through legal or other effective means. The database was originally designed to support biodiversity assessments; however, its scope expanded in recent years to include all public and nonprofit lands and waters. Most are public lands owned in fee (the owner of the property has full and irrevocable ownership of the land); however, long-term easements, leases, agreements, Congressional (e.g. 'Wilderness Area'), Executive (e.g. 'National Monument'), and administrative designations (e.g. 'Area of Critical Environmental Concern') documented in agency management plans are also included. The PAD-US strives to be a complete inventory of public land and other protected areas, compiling “best available” data provided by managing agencies and organizations. The PAD-US geodatabase maps and describes areas using over twenty-five attributes and five feature classes representing the U.S. protected areas network in separate feature classes: Fee (ownership parcels), Designation, Easement, Marine, Proclamation and Other Planning Boundaries. Five additional feature classes include various combinations of the primary layers (for example, Combined_Fee_Easement) to support data management, queries, web mapping services, and analyses. This PAD-US Version 2.1 dataset includes a variety of updates and new data from the previous Version 2.0 dataset (USGS, 2018 https://doi.org/10.5066/P955KPLE ), achieving the primary goal to "Complete the PAD-US Inventory by 2020" (https://www.usgs.gov/core-science-systems/science-analytics-and-synthesis/gap/science/pad-us-vision) by addressing known data gaps with newly available data. The following list summarizes the integration of "best available" spatial data to ensure public lands and other protected areas from all jurisdictions are represented in PAD-US, along with continued improvements and regular maintenance of the federal theme. Completing the PAD-US Inventory: 1) Integration of over 75,000 city parks in all 50 States (and the District of Columbia) from The Trust for Public Land's (TPL) ParkServe data development initiative (https://parkserve.tpl.org/) added nearly 2.7 million acres of protected area and significantly reduced the primary known data gap in previous PAD-US versions (local government lands). 2) First-time integration of the Census American Indian/Alaskan Native Areas (AIA) dataset (https://www2.census.gov/geo/tiger/TIGER2019/AIANNH) representing the boundaries for federally recognized American Indian reservations and off-reservation trust lands across the nation (as of January 1, 2020, as reported by the federally recognized tribal governments through the Census Bureau's Boundary and Annexation Survey) addressed another major PAD-US data gap. 3) Aggregation of nearly 5,000 protected areas owned by local land trusts in 13 states, aggregated by Ducks Unlimited through data calls for easements to update the National Conservation Easement Database (https://www.conservationeasement.us/), increased PAD-US protected areas by over 350,000 acres. Maintaining regular Federal updates: 1) Major update of the Federal estate (fee ownership parcels, easement interest, and management designations), including authoritative data from 8 agencies: Bureau of Land Management (BLM), U.S. Census Bureau (Census), Department of Defense (DOD), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), National Park Service (NPS), Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), U.S. Forest Service (USFS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The federal theme in PAD-US is developed in close collaboration with the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) Federal Lands Working Group (FLWG, https://communities.geoplatform.gov/ngda-govunits/federal-lands-workgroup/); 2) Complete National Marine Protected Areas (MPA) update: from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) MPA Inventory, including conservation measure ('GAP Status Code', 'IUCN Category') review by NOAA; Other changes: 1) PAD-US field name change - The "Public Access" field name changed from 'Access' to 'Pub_Access' to avoid unintended scripting errors associated with the script command 'access'. 2) Additional field - The "Feature Class" (FeatClass) field was added to all layers within PAD-US 2.1 (only included in the "Combined" layers of PAD-US 2.0 to describe which feature class data originated from). 3) Categorical GAP Status Code default changes - National Monuments are categorically assigned GAP Status Code = 2 (previously GAP 3), in the absence of other information, to better represent biodiversity protection restrictions associated with the designation. The Bureau of Land Management Areas of Environmental Concern (ACECs) are categorically assigned GAP Status Code = 3 (previously GAP 2) as the areas are administratively protected, not permanent. More information is available upon request. 4) Agency Name (FWS) geodatabase domain description changed to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (previously U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service). 5) Select areas in the provisional PAD-US 2.1 Proclamation feature class were removed following a consultation with the data-steward (Census Bureau). Tribal designated statistical areas are purely a geographic area for providing Census statistics with no land base. Most affected areas are relatively small; however, 4,341,120 acres and 37 records were removed in total. Contact Mason Croft (masoncroft@boisestate) for more information about how to identify these records. For more information regarding the PAD-US dataset please visit, https://usgs.gov/gapanalysis/PAD-US/. For more information about data aggregation please review the Online PAD-US Data Manual available at https://www.usgs.gov/core-science-systems/science-analytics-and-synthesis/gap/pad-us-data-manual .

The mission of the USGS Gap Analysis Program (GAP) is providing state, regional and national assessments of the conservation status of native vertebrate species and natural land cover types and facilitating the application of this information to land management activities. The PAD-US geodatabase is required to organize and assess the management status (i.e. apply GAP Status Codes) of elements of biodiversity protection. The goal of GAP is to 'keep common species common' by identifying species and plant communities not adequately represented in existing conservation lands. Common species are those not currently threatened with extinction. By identifying their habitats, gap analysis gives land managers and policy makers the information they need to make better-informed decisions when identifying priority areas for conservation. In cooperation with UNEP-World Conservation Monitoring Centre, GAP ensures PAD-US also supports global analyses to inform policy decisions by maintaining World Database for Protected Areas (WDPA) Site Codes and data for International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) categorized protected areas in the United States. GAP seeks to increase the efficiency and accuracy of PAD-US updates by leveraging resources in protected areas data aggregation and maintenance as described in "A Map of the Future", published following the PAD-US Design Project (July, 2009). While PAD-US was originally developed to support the GAP Mission stated above, the dataset is robust and has been expanded to support the conservation, recreation and public health communities as well. Additional applications become apparent over time.