CPAD is an inventory of lands owned outright by public agencies and non-profits who manage them for open space purposes (wilderness, parks, forestry, wetlands, etc.), not including lands held under easements. Please observe the following guidelines when commenting or editing in MapCollaborator:
CPAD is an OWNERSHIP inventory - we need to know who actually OWNS each parcel in the database (we also want to know if another agency MANAGES the land).
Holdings in CPAD are mostly ALIGNED to assessor parcel boundaries. Parcel lines in most counties can be seen in the Google Base Map (G Streets tab in Base Maps) when zoomed in to street level, and can be used as reference for any shapes you create. In rural areas, some parcels lines may not match what's seen in aerial images but CPAD generally stays with the parcel boundaries - let us know if there are major alignment problems with any of these rural parcels.
Google and Bing Street base maps have imperfect information on protected areas in California, particularly beyond neighborhood/city park scale - their green areas can create confusion when we overlay the much more accurate and complete CPAD data. Bing Maps parks data is somewhat better but still not complete or accurate for California.
URBAN PARKS can be challenging to define - CPAD focuses on open space areas and generally does NOT include a city park or recreation site if it is primarily HARDSCAPE (courts, swimming pools, buildings). In the future, we may include these, but for now, please avoid including recreation sites that have more than half their total land area in hardscape.
CPAD does NOT include SCHOOL fields unless they have an official agreement to be used as public recreation space.
CPAD includes publicly owned golf courses (not privately owned courses) and some publicly owned cemeteries - these are all flagged in the CPAD database.
SPECIAL DISTRICTS are public agencies that have their own board of directors (and therefore are not part of a city or a county). NON-PROFITS include land trusts and other such organizations qualified to hold land for permanent conservation purposes.
CPAD does NOT include TRIBAL lands or MILITARY lands (except Army Corps of Engineers recreation sites) - data on these is maintained separately.
Choose from the actions below to review parks, add comments about parks, propose the addition of new CPAD units (drawing on the map or upload your own GIS files), or propose the reshaping of existing units.
Comments and edits submitted in CPAD MapCollaborator will be reflected in the twice yearly CPAD updates and will not appear on this map until those updates are released.
The GIS data in CPAD and CCED are based on land ownership or legal easements that restrict how lands can be used. The ownership focus of the databases is intended to assist in the planning, management, and long-term care of lands owned by government agencies and nonprofits for open space purposes. The lands represented here are the traditional unceded territory of more than 100 nations. To learn more about a particular territory please visit the California Native Heritage Commission's Digital Atlas.
We recognize that the Western perspective of land ownership is limited and does not reflect an important range of cultural views, especially of many Indigenous peoples. Furthermore, land ownership as a structure has been used to promote empire and colonization.
These data represent only one lens of how to view California's landscape. CPAD and CCED are not intended to represent, replace, or negate different cultural views of lands such as spiritual ownership, stewardship, or caretaking.
As we seek to respect the many diverse Indigenous people connected to this land from time immemorial, we welcome feedback on how to improve and address non-Western perspectives and how to respectfully represent them. Email us at cpad@calands.org.
Zoom to a location
Choose a location by using the zoom tools on the map, search for a location below, or pick a location from the list.
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Location Search
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Post a note on the map
Click the button below to start, then move your cursor to the location of interest. Click on a precise location to place the note marker, and then fill in the information in the form. Choose save, or cancel to exit without saving.
Add an area
To add a new CPAD unit, zoom into a location on the map, then click "Draw an area" button below to start. Click on the map to add vertices, then double click to finish the shape. Fill in details in the form. Click save to save your suggested edit, or click cancel to exit without saving.
Or, use the Edit button to click an area on the map and submit a recommended edit.
To add an area by uploading data, use the "Upload Data" section below
Upload data for review
StreetView & BirdsEye
CPAD version 2024a
Uploaded files
Use these hyperlinks to link directly to MapCollaborator with an agency already selected.
This can be used to create embeddable maps of a specific agency of interest.