How the Trust for Public Land used Regrid to build the first parcel-level climate investment tool

In the race to address climate change, land is one of our most underleveraged assets. Forests, wetlands, and open spaces quietly sequester carbon, support biodiversity, and safeguard communities from climate extremes.

But until recently, there was no practical way to identify which specific parcels of land offered the greatest carbon benefit—or to connect that potential to ownership and acquisition.

Now, that’s changed. The Trust for Public Land (TPL), with the support of Regrid’s nationwide parcel data, has created the first tool that maps carbon storage potential at the parcel level across all 50 states.

The result is a new kind of decision-making interface: one that connects climate value with land ownership, usability, and conservation opportunity.

The opportunity was clear

Carbon markets are booming, but decision-makers lacked a way to evaluate individual land parcels for their climate potential. National carbon datasets exist, but they stop short of the property line.

Without parcel-level context, like:

• Who owns the land
• How it’s used, and
• What it might cost

there’s no clear path from carbon potential to real-world climate action.

TPL saw the chance to fill that gap. Their goal was to create a nationwide tool that didn’t just model climate value in theory but made it actionable—helping land trusts, agencies, and investors prioritize properties based on their carbon benefits.

The challenge was integration

Conservation and carbon data often live in silos. One source might show forest carbon density. Another might list parcel ownership. Yet another might track land value. But until now, there was no way to merge them into a coherent, location-specific, and actionable tool.

You can’t invest in land protection—or develop carbon offsets—without knowing who owns the land, what it’s used for, how it performs climatically, or what it might take to protect it.

For carbon offsets, land acquisition, or incentive programs to scale, these elements needed to come together. TPL needed a consistent, nationwide dataset that could link environmental value to real-world parcels with traceable boundaries and metadata.

Regrid was the missing link

To solve this, TPL turned to Regrid’s nationwide parcel fabric as the foundational layer for their carbon mapping initiative. With over 150 million parcels, standardized geometries, and harmonized ownership and land use data, Regrid offered a ready-made foundation to unify scattered data layers.

That consistency enabled TPL to overlay carbon sequestration estimates directly onto individual properties—making abstract environmental data useful at the decision-making level.

With this infrastructure in place, the TPL team:

• Mapped carbon storage potential to individual land parcels
• Overlaid parcel boundaries, ownership, and land use attributes
• Built an interactive, web-based GIS tool that spans all 50 states

This enables users to evaluate land not just by its ecological value, but by who owns it and what it might cost to protect.

The result was a first-of-its-kind carbon map

The result is the most detailed national carbon map ever made—tied not to pixels or zones, but to real, ownable parcels. It covers 1.3 billion acres and enables users to move from climate theory to practical strategy in seconds.

Now, land trusts can identify properties where conservation would yield the highest carbon return. Carbon project developers can locate parcels that align with offset goals. And agencies can better target climate investments based on transparent, geospatial data that includes ownership and land use context.

The impact goes far beyond mapping

For climate-focused organizations, this project changes the game. What once took weeks or months of due diligence can now be done in minutes. A forest in Georgia that stores five times more carbon than a similar tract in Kansas can be identified instantly—and if it’s more affordable to protect, that opportunity becomes actionable on the spot.

The TPL carbon map is already reshaping how climate value is identified, prioritized, and acted upon.

• Carbon developers can locate high-sequestration parcels ready for offset projects
• Land trusts can prioritize acquisitions based on carbon return on investment
• Government agencies can direct conservation incentives where they’ll have the greatest impact
• ESG and climate funds can link nature-based solutions directly to investable properties

By adding ownership data to carbon science, Regrid helped transform a research problem into an implementation tool. Where other datasets ended at ecological modeling, Regrid carried the insight across the finish line—into the realm of permits, partnerships, and purchase agreements.

Why the climate needs parcel-level intelligence

Climate urgency is no longer theoretical. Governments, nonprofits, and ESG investors are racing to secure nature-based solutions to meet emissions goals and build resilience. But until now, the data infrastructure to support that effort has been fragmented and incomplete.

The Trust for Public Land’s carbon mapping tool shows what’s possible with the right information in hand.

• A forest in Georgia might store 5× more carbon than a similar tract in Kansas, but you wouldn’t know it from regional heatmaps.
• Many high-carbon parcels are surprisingly low-cost, especially in rural areas, but only parcel data reveals that potential.
• Climate value means little if you don’t know who owns the land. Regrid bridges that gap, enabling real-world deals.

Explore the map: TPL Carbon Map