This polygon shapefile depicts Zayante Soil Areas in the County of Santa Cruz, California. This layer was used to identify potential Sandhills Habitat Areas prior to the Sandhills Conservation and Management Plan. Zayante soils are derived from sediment deposited over 15 million years ago when the region was under a vast sea. As evidence of their origins, the inland Sand Hills contain a variety of marine fossils, including deep beds of sand dollars. Due to their coarse texture, Zayante soils have low water and nutrient availability. As a result, they support two endemic communities which are very different from the moisture-loving coast redwood and mixed evergreen forests that dominate the region. This layer is part of a collection of GIS data created for Santa Cruz County, California.The Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Unit falls under the purview of the County of Santa Cruz Information Services Department. The GIS Unit serves all County departments and external customers and provides data on land, features and people of Santa Cruz County. Santa Cruz County encompasses 4 cities and approximately 265,000 people. This coverage can be used for basic applications such as viewing, querying and map output production, or to provide a basemap to support graphical overlays and analyses of geospatial data.