The Geospatial Centroid at Colorado State University is pleased to announce the release of COMaP Version 8, updated through March 2010. As you may know, the COMaP (Colorado Ownership, Management and Protection) project gathers and manages data to map the status of Colorado’s protected areas throughout the state and shares these data with interested parties.

COMaP is produced in the Warner College of Natural Resources at Colorado State University, and has been well supported by Great Outdoors Colorado for the past five versions. In order to provide support for current versions and to create updated versions of COMaP, we are asking that both data providers and data users consider contributing financially to support future versions.  Many agencies have indicated their willingness to support this endeavor, but we have not had a method in place to allow this.  The Geospatial Centroid @CSU is establishing a system that would allow for both direct donations as well as the ability to receive funds from agencies to financially support COMaP by being billed by the Centroid. More details will follow as these systems are established. The Geospatial Centroid will manage and distribute updates to COMaP as long as financial support is available.

The COMaP dataset—developed as an ArcGIS geodatabase and designed to be used with GIS software–is accessible freely to the public, with restrictions on re-distribution or commercial use. Agencies and organizations that have contributed data can request a more detailed (private) dataset that includes additional lands under donated easements.

The PUBLIC version of the dataset can be downloaded directly from the COMaP data page of the Geospatial Centroid website. You will be prompted to agree to the Data Use Disclaimer and provide your contact information, and then be allowed access to the data. The PRIVATE version of COMaP will only be distributed through our office and you must submit a request to: comap@nrel.colostate.edu.