Landseed is a public benefit corporation building the verification and registry infrastructure for Earth Credits — a new commodity that captures the full ecological value of protected land.
Every acre of protected land produces real ecological value: carbon sequestration, water filtration, biodiversity habitat, flood mitigation, soil conservation, pollination, climate regulation, and more. Seventeen ecosystem services, all measurable, all real, all currently unpriced.
Carbon credits capture one of these services. Earth Credits capture all of them.
Landseed operates as the verifier and registry for Earth Credits — the ecological equivalent of what Verra does for carbon credits. Landseed measures ecological condition using the Ecological Condition Index (ECI), a six-dimension assessment aligned with the UN System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA EA). Landseed mints Earth Credits based on verified measurements. Landseed maintains the registry. Landseed monitors stewardship compliance.
Landseed does not trade Earth Credits. Landseed does not set Earth Credit prices. Landseed does not hold Earth Credit inventory. The measurement and the market are permanently separated.
Every Earth Credit traces back to a recorded Nature Rights Deed (NRD) — a legal instrument filed at the county level that grants ecosystem service rights from a landowner to an NRD holder. The NRD is a deed of conveyance, the same class of legal instrument as a conservation easement. It captures rights to carbon, biodiversity, water quality, flood mitigation, soil conservation, pollination, recreation, research access, and all other ecosystem services produced by the property.
The NRD works alongside existing conservation easements as a complementary instrument — coordinated, not hierarchical. In any conflict between the two instruments, the more restrictive provision controls, ensuring conservation protections always prevail.
The ECI measures six dimensions of ecosystem health based on the SEEA EA framework adopted by the UN Statistical Commission and implemented by 94 countries:
Physical State — soil structure, hydrology, water availability. Chemical State — soil organic carbon, water chemistry, nutrient status. Compositional State — species diversity, genetic diversity, community composition. Structural State — canopy architecture, biomass distribution, vegetation structure. Functional State — productivity, carbon cycling, nutrient cycling, water regulation. Landscape State — connectivity, fragmentation, spatial configuration.
Each dimension is scored from 0 (collapsed) to 1 (fully healthy) by comparing measured conditions against published scientific reference conditions. The six scores are aggregated using a penalized geometric mean — ensuring that collapse in any single dimension cannot be hidden by high scores in the others.
A threat multiplier adjusts Earth Credit minting rates based on demonstrated conservation need, using satellite data on regional land use change, development pressure mapping, and IUCN ecosystem rarity classifications. Properties facing genuine threat earn more credits. Properties with no demonstrated threat earn fewer. This prevents the additionality failures that have undermined other ecosystem credit systems.
Landseed exists because conservation needs sustainable funding that does not depend on grants, philanthropy, or government programs alone. Earth Credits create a market mechanism where protecting land generates a tradeable commodity — purchased and permanently retired by corporations, governments, and foundations for ESG compliance, biodiversity commitments, and sustainability goals.
The result: conservation that funds itself. Land trusts receive ongoing revenue from the ecological value their stewardship produces. Investors access a new commodity class backed by real, verified ecological condition. And the Earth gets the protection it needs — measured, verified, and valued.
What would Earth do?