For 2011, GreenInfo Network will be updating CPAD twice - the January 1.6 release and a September 1.7 release. We welcome interest in helping support the maintenance of CPAD generally or in particular places of the state (e.g., the Sierra) or for types of lands (forests, beaches, etc.).

CPAD has been developed to support conservation and open space/recreation planning and public access - it is not an inventory of all public lands (for example, city halls, water treatment plants and other government-owned facility lands are not included). At the city level, recreation facilities that do not include significant open space have not been included (e.g. swimming pools, recreation halls, hardscape ball courts, etc., where these are not part of a park with green space) and many park boundaries show only the open space area of the holding, not associated buildings. Highly accurate GIS data on urban parks is often hard to obtain and parks must be verified by using aerial imagery - determining park-related buildings is difficult in these situations and so CPAD focuses on the more identifiable green space areas.

"Protected" lands in CPAD are those owned by agencies whose main mission is to continue them in any open space use, including timber management and active recreation. For those who work on conservation this definition is not the same as biodiversity ranks defined by the USGS Geological Survey Gap Analysis Program or the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (in 2011, a CPAD-Gap Edition will be available, however). GreenInfo Network applies an expansive definition of protected to make CPAD useful to the widest range of practitioners. We recognize that parcels of US Forest Service and BLM lands are sometimes sold or traded, but we believe that it is better to include all such areas in CPAD, updating them at each release.

Military lands often have very significant natural resources but these lands are not primarily intended to be open space resources. Because of this primary use focus, they are not part of CPAD. However, GreenInfo Network has created a GIS data layer of military bases in California, available from Cal-Atlas. This data may not be complete or current, due to limited access to military base information from the Dept. of Defense, but it does align with CPAD data.

Tribal lands are generally not included in CPAD because they are the lands of Native American sovereign nations. While they often contain valuable open space areas, unless these are protected through defined laws or enforceable agreements, they are not considered available for inclusion in CPAD. GreenInfo Network has created a data layer of tribal areas that is available at Cal-Atlas - this data aligns with CPAD boundaries, but may not be completely current due to data source limitations.

The best approach is to use our MapCollaborator CPAD Edition to submit comments or actual proposals for geographic line work revisions - it's easy and very efficient (you'll be able to see the status of your proposed changes on the map when you check back in later).

You can also send us an email cpad (at) calands.org with your name, organization, the county, Holding ID and agency name of the parcel(s) in question and any comments you wish to forward to us about the Holding. If you are telling us about a new holding, please tell us who owns it, when it was purchased, parcel numbers (APNs) if available and public access status (open, restricted, closed). A low resolution .jpg or other image file, or a KML or zipped Shapefile is very helpful.

We may not be able to respond immediately to these communications (depending on avaiable funding), but we welcome them and will consider them in any updates that we are able to conduct.

The acreages in CPAD are calculated by the GIS system, based on the polygons in the file. Sometimes these polygons are exactly the same as the owning agency's data, other times they can vary - the following are the main explanations of acreage differences:

1. CPAD reports acreage by owning agency - so if one agency is managing a unit that includes property owned by another agency, CPAD will report only the acres owned by the first agency.
2. In general, CPAD relies on county assessor GIS parcels for property boundaries (for those counties with available GIS parcels) - these boundaries may be somewhat different than those defined in an owning agency's records, leading to acreage differences. There are many complications in resolving differences between what assessors and agencies show as property boundaries - users should remember that CPAD is a general planning and assessment resource, and is not intended to be an authoriative source for legal or other high specific property boundaries.
3. Easements are not included in CPAD data at this time. Some agencies may count easement acreage whereas CPAD would not include this acreage.

The CPAD database is built on individual parcels of land, called Holdings. Units are aggregated Holdings under a common name - for example, a state park may have several parcels (holdings) that make up the commonly known area ("Mt. Diablo State Park") which is the Unit. Where a park or open space is simply a single Holding, then the Unit is just the Holding (e.g., a small city park).

This structure has been used to allow for tracking new parcels that are added to some parks or open space areas over time, to allow for better integration with assessor parcel coding, and to account for where individual Holdings have different names than the overall Unit name of which they are a part.

In the CPAD data browser and in the ParkInfo browser Unit Names and IDs are shown.

SUPER UNITS were added in 2010 and are a GIS file that consolidates state and federal holdings into same-name units even where they cross county lines (Units boundaries are broken at county lines) - SuperUnits are mainly for cartographic display purposes.

GreenInfo’s ParkInfo web site is a full featured finder application for searching CPAD data on lands that are open or restricted access. The ParkInfo mapping application is also the basis for the California Dept. of Parks and Recreation FindRecreation web portal.

GreenInfo can easily adapt ParkInfo to be any agency’s or organization’s web map. By setting the initial view and selected parks list to an agency’s holdings, ParkInfo can be an effective interactive web portal. Without any customization, costs are usually $1-2,000 to create the park finder and install it in the host web site. Annual maintenance is about $100-250/year. For more information contact GreenInfo Network.

CPAD 1.7, ©September 2011 GreenInfo Network - www.calands.org