This polygon shapefile depicts land parcels that are regulated under the Willimason Act in Monterey County, California as of 2007. The California Land Conservation Act, better known as the Williamson Act, has been the California’s agricultural land protection program since its enactmentin1965. The Williamson Act preserves agricultural and open space lands through property tax incentives and voluntary restrictive use contracts. Private landowners voluntarily restrict their land to agricultural and compatible open space uses under minimum ten year rolling term contracts with local governments. In return, restricted parcels are assessed for property tax purposes at a rate consistent with their actual use, rather than potential market value. The purpose of the Williamson Act is to preserve the County’s prime soils and intensive high value agricultural operations, and to discourage premature and unnecessary conversion of agricultural land to urban use. This layer is part of a collection of GIS data for Monterey County in California. This dataset is intended for researchers, students, and policy makers for reference and mapping purposes, and may be used for basic applications such as viewing, querying, and map output production, or to provide a basemap to support graphical overlays and analysis with other spatial data.