CLEAR is an Internet-based delivery system for landowners and other decision-makers to enhance their land management capabilities. This tool provides a window through which users may view and manipulate spatial (map-based) data at the local level.

Land use decisions at the local level suffer from a lack of access to site-specific antural resources information.
Many rural areas, especially those near urban centers are going through a rapid transistion in land ownership and use. Faced with escalating rural land values and declining incomes from agricultural production, landowners are confronted with important land use decisions. These decisions are driving the current trends toward increased ownership fragmentation and urban sprawl into areas important for natural resources management.

Ownership-specific natural resource information is not easily accessible by private landowners, land managers and those that provide land management assistance at the local level.
Most site-specific information relevant to the management and conservation of water, soil, wildlife, rangelands, and forest resources is currently available only to those with access to Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and similar technologies. Most of these resources are available to scientists and agency personnel, but are not yet widely used by most private landowners, County Extension Agents, and other local natural resource managers important for agricultural and natural resources management.

CLEAR provides local access to site-specific natural resources information.
The County Level Easily Accessible Resource (CLEAR) system is designed and developed to address the most common information needs at the ownership and landscape level. In development for almost 2 years, the process has included the use of landowner advisors as an "end-users group" for assisting in system design, development, and training. This process incorporated the perspective of private landowners (which may differ from that of scientists and/or GIS administrators) into the system design.

CLEAR is an Integrated Decision Support System delivered over the Internet.
CLEAR provides land managers and planners with access to digital land imagery and high resolution mapping resources. CLEAR users can easily create a customized analysis and resource inventory for an individual property, group of properties, or entire county landscape. The CLEAR interface is expandable for combining other local and regional databases as they become available. CLEAR will also provide access to publications and other relevant natural resources information. In addition, the project will include training of landowners in the use of CLEAR to inventory their natural resources, and to integrate wildlife, forestry range management, nature tourism, and agricultural uses of their lands.