Priority Preservation Areas

This GIS dataset contains Priority Preservation Areas adopted by counties under the Agricultural Stewardship Act of 2006. Data are collected from counties by the Maryland Department of Planning (Planning) or digitized by Planning in coordination with local jurisdictions. For more information about the Agricultural Stewardship Act of 2006, see the Priority Preservation Area requirement established in House Bill 2 (2006) for counties seeking state certification of their farmland preservation programs and located in §2-518 of the Agriculture Article. This document describes standard operating procedures for aggregating Priority Preservation Area GIS data. These procedures may not apply to historical data (i.e. records for which the SRC_DATE field is blank). For example, Planning may have realigned historical data from local jurisdictions to parcel polygon boundaries.Planning generally requests updated GIS data after learning of a change to a Priority Preservation Area. Aggregated data may be outdated or incomplete if Planning has not yet received or processed GIS updates from jurisdictions. Planning generally does not alter geometries received from the local jurisdictions.