FOSS4G NA 2024

Making California’s 30x30 Data Happen with GeoPandas
09-11, 15:00–15:30 (America/Chicago), Grand C

California’s 30x30 initiative relies on the assignment of USGS GAP codes to California’s data on protected lands (CPAD & CCED). GreenInfo Network built a system of processes using GeoPandas to assign GAP codes and delineate lands for 30x30.


In October 2020, California elevated the role of natural and working lands in the fight against climate change and advanced biodiversity conservation as an administration priority, committing to the goal of conserving 30 percent of lands and coastal waters by 2030. Thus California’s 30x30 was born.
To track progress toward the 30% target, a key piece of 30x30 in California is the ability to map, enumerate, and report the land considered protected and conserved for biodiversity. California lands protected by both fee and easement are tracked in two respective databases - the California Protected Areas Database (CPAD) and the California Conservation Easement Database (CCED), which are maintained, updated and released biannually by GreenInfo Network. These databases serve as the foundational data for mapping the lands that count toward 30x30 in California.
Lands captured in CPAD and CCED are managed by over 1000 different agencies and target many different uses and goals - from recreation-only urban parks to remote wilderness areas with limited human presence to open space lands that allow grazing. For this reason, not every protected land in CPAD and CCED meets the 30x30 requirements for what counts as conserved and protected for biodiversity specifically. To delineate lands that qualify for 30x30 from those that do not, the California Natural Resources Agency (CNRA) chose the USGS GAP code system to rank the level of protection and conservation of protected lands in California. So in addition to maintaining and updating the data in CPAD and CCED, GreenInfo Network’s partnership with CNRA and role in 30x30 now includes collecting GAP code data and assigning those GAP codes to the lands in CPAD and CCED.

To obtain GAP codes for federal, state, and locally managed lands in California, GreenInfo Network relies on three different data sources - the PAD-US database, the California Department of Parks and Recreation (CDPR), and local land managing agencies themselves. The PAD-US database and CDPR provide GAP codes for federal and state managed lands respectively, and this data is readily available, easy to obtain, and stays relatively consistent from one year to another. However, when GreenInfo Network took on the 30x30 project there was no easy way to obtain GAP codes for lands managed by the hundreds of different local and regional land managing agencies, which combined manage a significant percentage of California’s conserved and protected lands. Figuring out which of these locally managed lands qualify and count for 30x30 is a major goal. Being able to track changes in the protection and conservation status of these lands is another important goal, since it results in some lands that previously counted toward 30x30 to no longer count, and others that did not count toward 30x30, to count.

Our team at GreenInfo Network has spent the last year and a half developing a robust system that utilizes open source tools like GeoPandas to reliably and repeatedly obtain, track, ingest and assign GAP codes to the lands represented in CPAD and CCED. First, we wanted the end-user - the people working at local land managing agencies - to be able to easily submit GAP code data about their lands to us. For this purpose, we created the 30x30 Toolkits, which allow any local and regional agency to download the data we have specific to their lands in CPAD and CCED in either shapefile or tabular format, to review that data, to assign GAP codes to their lands, and then return that data back to us. These Toolkits are created using GeoPandas and Pandas, and can easily be updated on a daily basis in order to reflect the most up-to-date geometry and attributes we have on local lands in CPAD and CCED.

The second part of this system is to ingest submitted GAP codes and assign them to their respective lands in CPAD and CCED. Since many different agencies submit GAP data, we utilize Pandas and GeoPandas to create a master GAP data table, which becomes the most authoritative source of GAP data for local lands since it is based on direct input from local agencies. As the last step in this process, GreenInfo Network assigns GAP codes to lands in CPAD and CCED. Again with the aid of GeoPandas and Pandas, GAP codes for federal lands are assigned with data from PAD-US, GAP codes for state lands are assigned with data from CDPR, and lastly, GAP codes for local lands are assigned with the master GAP data table. Once those GAP assignments are made, CPAD and CCED are the most authoritative and foundational datasets for counting all lands that qualify for 30x30. This end product is used by CNRA to create their publicly accessible 30x30 Conserved Areas Layer to track where we stand in the effort to conserve 30% of land by the year 2030.