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California Department of Parks and Recreation, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

CPAD Includes:

  • National/state/regional parks, forests, preserves, and wildlife areas
  • Large and small urban parks that are mainly open space (as opposed to recreational facility structures)
  • Land trust preserves
  • Special district open space lands (watershed, recreation, etc.) and other types of open space

CPAD Does Not Include:

  • Military lands used primarily for military purposes
  • Tribal lands
  • Private golf courses
  • Public lands not intended for open space, such as municipal waste facilities, administrative buildings

CPAD Documentation

User Manual – Download the CPAD User Manual

Method for including GAP Codes in CPAD – Download

CPAD Structure

CPAD has three levels of data about protected lands:

1. Holdings

The core element in the CPAD database is the Holdings, which have the most detailed attribute information in CPAD. Holdings are equivalent to assessor parcels, however CPAD holdings may not fully align with such parcels.

Map showing holdings in Las Trampas Regional Wilderness
This image shows 91 holdings in dark green spanning across Alameda and Contra Costa counties. Together these holdings comprise the Las Trampas Regional Wilderness.

2. Units

Commonly named and owned protected areas within a single county (e.g., “Mt. Diablo State Park”) are Units, which may be made up of two or more Holdings. A unit may also have just one holding (e.g., an urban park, or another single parcel protected area). Units have summary attribute information. Commonly owned holdings that have different access attributes are defined as different Units.

Map showing units in Las Trampas Regional Wilderness
This image shows how the 91 holdings that make up Las Trampas Regional Wilderness are combined into four separate units. Each color in the associated image represents one of two things: a variation in the type of access (“open public access", "restricted public access", or "no public access”) or the county the park is contained in. Note that units are not required to be geographically contiguous, so holdings may be scattered geographically while remaining part of a unit due to shared county and access types. In cases where a protected area spans multiple counties or has varied access types, multiple units are required for differentiation. This is the case here with the units that cross the Alameda and Contra Costa county lines.

3. Super Units

Super Units are defined for use as cartographic aids (they show the outer boundary of groups of holdings, that have same name, manager, and access, regardless of county), as well as to support application developers working on recreational access projects that focus on knowing who manages sites.

Map showing super units in Las Trampas Regional Wilderness
This image shows super units that make up Las Trampas Regional Wilderness in three separate colors. Note how the units formerly split across Alameda and Contra Costa county can be combined into a single super unit, or retained as separate units.