Dear Friends, Partners, and Collaborators,

When GoodLands began, our vision was to map and mobilize Catholic property for environmental stewardship and social good. Thanks to an extraordinary community of GIS experts, cartographers, researchers, Church leaders, and conservationists, the demand for this work has grown far beyond what a single small nonprofit could fulfill on its own.

GoodLands as a standalone organization is winding down its operations, but the mission is not ending.

GoodLands’ non-sensitive data, methodologies, and spatial frameworks be made for public, noncommercial use under a variety of Creative Commons licenses on a case-by-case basis with each dataset. The intellectual property associated with this work is now held by Molly Burhans, the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, and the Catholic University of America. The license allows people to access and share the licensed materials with attribution; however it not permit commercial use or distribution of modified versions.

Where the Work Continues

The work will continue to grow through research and collaboration with dedicated partners:

• Catholic Digital Commons Foundation: Supporting long-term stewardship and access to core geospatial datasets and digital tools.

• The Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development’s Laudato Si’ Action Platform: Bringing spatial intelligence into Church-wide ecological action and sustainability efforts.

• The Catholic University of America’s Leonum Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technologies: Developing ecclesiastical data ontologies and standards that build on my past research and support future work in Catholic land stewardship.

• The Angelicum (Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas): Continuing foundational research in social sciences and ecclesiastical data frameworks through my graduate studies.

I hope these resources will help communities better understand, care for, and restore the lands entrusted to them and support mission-driven work at a scale beyond GoodLands.

To everyone who supported, advised, volunteered, and journeyed with GoodLands over the years: thank you. What an incredible journey it has been. I am deeply grateful that the work continues in a new form.

Peace in Christ,

Molly Burhans
Founder, GoodLands