The Protected Agricultural Lands Database (PALD)

• Until now, no nationwide system has existed to inventory spatial data specifically on protected agricultural land.

• It Informs  Farms Under Threat  and Land Use Protection Initiative research.

• Complements the  AFT Farmland Information Center  efforts to survey PACE and land trust agricultural land conservation efforts.

• Integrates with the NCED to provide tailored agricultural protection information.
  • NCED and other protected land databases with nationwide coverage don't always identify protected land as agricultural.

• Complements and integrates with other efforts to inventory protected lands across the U.S.

• Useful in prioritizing agricultural lands for conservation
  • Proximity to existing protected areas
  • Land cover and crop type summaries of protected ag lands
  • Environmental benefits like potential for carbon sequestration

• Improves understanding of successes in agricultural land protection, identifies gaps and needs at a local level, and assists in protection planning.

• Gather data and review
  • Pairs with Farmland Information Center (FIC) surveys of State and Local PACE, land trusts
  • Integrates with other protected lands inventories (NCED)
  • Includes federal ag protection programs (ACEP-ALE, FRPP)

• Fit to standard data structure
  • Key attributes and important information
  • Integrates/aligns with NCED

• Clean and quality assess/control
  • workflow to standardize data received
  • remove non-agricultural protected lands
  • correct acreage totals

• Values and protects landowner/manager privacy
  • We ask every data provider whether they need their boundaries withheld from public, viewable but not downloadable, or available for public sharing

• Summarize and share public version
  • Summary statistics, publicly available data and interactive web map

• Important limitations
  • Limited ability to 'clean' boundary geometries themselves
  • some data withheld from public
  • there are overlaps
  • not all information available for all easements

AFT and others can use the PALD to:

• Promote and measure the success of agricultural land protection efforts nationwide. 

• Inform future agricultural land conservation efforts.

• Provide spatial information on protected agricultural lands and their benefits for researchers.

• Quantify the environmental benefits of permanently protected agricultural lands.

• Assist land trusts, state and local government agencies, and other agricultural land protection organizations with a standardized inventory of spatial data on protected agricultural lands.

• Summarize soil, crop, and growing condition characteristics of protected agricultural lands

(Protected agriculture in New Jersey)

• Over 7 million acres of protected land

• Over 42 thousand parcels
  • 30,000+ for public viewing

• Data from over 400 sources

• More than 650 easement holders

• Over 2 million acres identified as PACE program easements

• 860 thousand acres of NRCS agricultural land protection program easements

(Protected lands 'holding back' development in PA)

Top-five states with the highest acres of protected lands acres in the PALD:

1. Colorado
2. Montana
3. Pennsylvania
4. California
5. Virginia

Top-five states with the highest acres of PACE program easements in the PALD:

1. Colorado
2. Maryland
3. New Jersey
4. Vermont
5. Delaware

Vital to Farms Under Threat and Land Use Protection Research efforts

The PALD helps us accurately assess historic and future conversion of agricultural lands to more developed land uses and identify where stronger protection efforts may be needed

(Protected agricultural lands and FUT conversion of agricultural land to near Mechanicsburg, PA)

Informing Farms Under Threat and Land Protection Research efforts

The PALD was used to help project future farmland protection in one of of our Farms Under Threat 2040 future scenarios

Visit  https://development2040.farmland.org/  to learn more!

(Projected farmland protection and future conversion of agricultural lands in Madison Milwaukee corridor)

Proximity to current protected lands for prioritization of future easements

• Considering the proximity to currently protected lands in prioritizing new land for conservation.

Just a few potential examples!

Our Productivity, Versatility, and Resiliency (PVR) index, a metric of agricultural land quality

NRCS important farmland soils

Combine with historic or future development metrics from residential or energy development

Land cover, forest or wetlands on protected agricultural lands, farm size, protected lands and solar development, and more . . .

The PALD version 1 is now available

Continue to fill in gaps

• Further identify PACE properties.
• Target largest remaining land trust/state PACE programs not yet included (version 2).
• Add further attribution on land cover, crop type, and other land value.

New projects for this year!

• Ecosystem services on NRCS ALE and Farm and Ranchland Protection Program (FRPP) easements
• FRPP story telling
• Greenhouse gas mitigation from protected agricultural lands

(Protected hazelnut farm outside Salem, OR)

The PALD version 1 is available to the public

• Data is in GDB, shapefile format, interactive web map, and soon as a web service.
• Contact us at maps@farmland.org to request!

Farms Under Threat layers

https://farmland.org/project/farms-under-threat/

PVR, land cover, agland conversion, future projections of development threat, and more

We'll provide you with links to access all of the above after this webinar

Please contact our GIS Team at  maps@farmland.org  to address issues, share comments, or provide additions to the database! 

https://farmland.org/NALN