MD Agricultural Land Preservation Foundation Easements

The Maryland Agricultural Land Preservation Foundation (MALPF), housed within the Maryland Department of Agriculture (MDA), protects agricultural lands through the use of perpetual easements. This program was created by the Maryland General Assembly in 1977, is governed by the Agricultural Article, Sections 2-501 through 2-519 of the Annotated Code of Maryland. MALPF’s primary purpose is to preserve productive agricultural land and woodland to provide for the continuing production of food and fiber for the citizens of Maryland. This is accomplished by landowners voluntarily applying to sell an easement on their property through a competitive State-wide application process. MALPF easement boundaries are estimated based on property descriptions provided by MDA, aligned to iMap parcel polygons and supplemented with MdProperty View data to facilitate use with vectorized parcel data. This GIS dataset is intended for general guidance and use only and is not designed as a substitute for legal survey. The coordinates displayed do not represent legal parcel corners and/or boundaries and they cannot be used for establishment of or in lieu of legal land survey boundaries. New fields have been added since the previous update to facilitate the integration of this dataset with the Protected Areas Database of the United States (PAD-US). Attributes for these fields, which are identified below as PAD-US fields, are not available for all data collected historically. The Maryland Department of Planning will continue to populate these new fields as updates become available. For a full description of the contents of the PAD-US fields, see https://www.usgs.gov/core-science-systems/science-analytics-and-synthesis/gap/pad-us-data-manual. Attributes within this dataset include: Source Protected Area ID (PAD-US field): MALPF easement number Settled Acres: Settlement acreage Settled Date: Settlement date, including month date and year County: County in which protected land is located Weblink: Link to more information about the protection program Category (PAD-US field): PAD-US classification for the protection mechanism associated with the protected property Owner Type (PAD-US field): General land owner type of the fee property interest, standardized for the US Owner Name (PAD-US field): Owner of the fee interest of the property, standardized for the nation Local Owner (PAD-US field): The actual name of the owner of the fee interest Easement Holder Type (PAD-US field): Where the ‘Category’ of protection code (above) is listed as “Easement”, this field specifies the type of holder of the easement. Easement Holder (PAD-US field): Where the ‘Category’ of protection code (above) is listed as “Easement”, this field indicates the actual name of the holder of the conservation easement. Unit Name (PAD-US field): The name of the land management unit or protected area State (PAD-US field): Name of state in which the protected land is located Aggregator Source (PAD-US field): Organization credited with data aggregation. Attributed in the format 'organization name_filename YearPublished.filetype'GIS Source (PAD-US field): The original source of GIS spatial and attribute information the aggregator obtained where availableGIS Source Date (PAD-US field): The date (yyyy/mm/dd) GIS data was obtained by the data source for aggregation GIS Acres (PAD-US field): Acres calculated for each polygon in NAD83 Meters. The GIS Acres may differ from the Settled Acres, particularly in cases where easement boundaries are estimated based on parcel polygon boundaries. Date of Protection (PAD-US field): The year (yyyy) the property was legally protected via fee acquisition or enactment of a conservation easement Public Access (PAD-US field):Accessibility of the property to the public, standardized