Description: <DIV STYLE="text-align:Left;"><DIV><DIV><P STYLE="margin:0 0 0 0;"><SPAN>The Conservation Lands of Georgia is a geodatabase that illustrates and describes public land ownership, management and conservation lands within Georgia, including voluntarily provided privately protected areas. The included lands are assigned conservation measures that qualify their intent to manage lands for the preservation of biological diversity and for other natural, recreational and cultural uses; managed for these purposes through legal or other effective means. The geodatabase includes: 1) Geographic boundaries of public land ownership and voluntarily provided private conservation lands (e.g., Nature Conservancy Preserves); 2) The combination land owner, land manager, management designation or type, parcel name, GIS Acres and source of geographic information of each mapped land unit 3) GAP Status Code conservation measure of each parcel based on USGS National Gap Analysis Program (GAP) protection level categories which provide a measurement of management intent for long-term biodiversity conservation 4) IUCN category for a protected area's inclusion into UNEP-World Conservation Monitoring Centre's World Database for Protected Areas. IUCN protected areas are defined as, "A clearly defined geographical space, recognized, dedicated and managed, through legal or other effective means, to achieve the long-term conservation of nature with associated ecosystem services and cultural values" and are categorized following a classification scheme available through USGS GAP. The Georgia database updates include: 1) National Park Service (NPS). 2) Department of Defense (DOD) boundaries. 3) Local city and county protected areas. 4) Private conservation lands under jurisdiction of the Army Corps of Engineers for wetland site mitigation. The Natural Resources Spatial Analysis Laboratory’s (NARSAL) mission is to provide ecological science knowledge to environmental policy. Located at the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences on the campus of the University of Georgia, NARSAL serves as a resource for the natural research community. For detailed definitions and discussion on NARSAL, GAP, and GLUT projects, refer to http://narsal.uga.edu. The goal of the Georgia Gap Analysis Program (GAP) is to provide assessments of the conservation status of native vertebrate species and natural land cover types and to facilitate the application of this information to land management activities. The Conservation Lands of Georgia geodatabase is required to organize and assess the management status (i.e. apply GAP Status Codes) of elements of biodiversity protection. The goal of GAP is to keep common species common by identifying species and plant communities not adequately represented in existing conservation lands. Common species are those not currently threatened with extinction. By identifying their habitats, Gap Analysis gives land managers and policy makers the information they need to make better-informed decisions when identifying priority areas for conservation</SPAN><SPAN STYLE="font-size:8pt">.</SPAN></P><P><SPAN /></P></DIV></DIV></DIV>
Service Item Id: 3d39121909334242960e97bcb284da7b
Copyright Text: Kevin Samples, Natural Resources Spatial Analysis Laboratory, University
of Georgia. Georgia Department of Natural Resources, WRD Nongame Conservation