Protected Areas Database of the United States (PAD-US) 2.0 - World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA) Submission

Introduction and global data sharing partnerships

The USGS Science Analytics and Synthesis (SAS) Gap Analysis Project (GAP) manages the Protected Areas Database of the United States (PAD-US), an Arc10x geodatabase, that includes areas dedicated to the preservation of biological diversity and to other natural, recreation, historic, and cultural uses, managed for these purposes through legal or other effective means. The United Nations Environmental Program World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) tracks global progress toward biodiversity protection targets (Aichi Target 11) enacted by the Convention for Biological Diversity (CBD) through the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA) and World Database on Other Effective Area-Based Conservation Measures (WD-OECM) available at: protectedplanet.net.  See the Aichi Target 11 dashboard (https://www.protectedplanet.net/target-11-dashboard) for official protection statistics recognized globally and developed for the CBD, or here for more information and statistics on the USA’s protected areas: https://www.protectedplanet.net/country/US.

In 2008, USGS began collaborating with UNEP-WCMC and International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) protected areas experts to submit data for the WDPA following PAD-US updates.  As a requirement to fulfill USGS's analysis mission to assess management intent for the long-term protection of biological diversity, PAD-US includes a nationally relevant conservation measure, the GAP Status Code, and the globally recognized IUCN Category measure.  UNEP-WCMC and IUCN suggest GAP Status Code 1 and 2 protected areas from PAD-US for inclusion in the WDPA as these areas, primarily managed for biodiversity protection, meet the definition of protection defined by IUCN.  USGS offers nationally relevant PAD-US Statistics and Reports (https://www.usgs.gov/core-science-systems/science-analytics-and-synthesis/gap/science/pad-us-statistics-and-reports) including multiple use lands (GAP Status Code 3) and areas with no known biodiversity protection mandate (e.g. local parks).

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) manages the Marine Protected Areas (MPA) Inventory and assigns IUCN Categories to MPAs before sharing data with USGS for PAD-US.  USGS and NOAA collaborate to review and refine conservation measure assignments to ensure terrestrial and marine protected areas in PAD-US, sent to UNEP-WCMC for inclusion in the WDPA, reflect the best available spatial representation of the U.S. protection network managed for biodiversity. NOAA is the authoritative source of Marine Protected Areas data and summary statistics for the U.S. available at: https://marineprotectedareas.noaa.gov/dataanalysis/mpainventory/. As of PAD-US 2.0, NOAA reports 26% of U.S. marine waters are protected.

The PAD-US 2.0 Combined Marine, Fee, Designation, Easement feature class (GAP Status Code 1 and 2 only) is the source of protected areas data in this WDPA update (PADUS2_0_WDPASchema.zip).  NOAA is the sole source of all MPAs in PAD-US. USGS translates the PAD-US derivative into the WDPA schema for efficient aggregation by UNEP-WCMC. USGS assigns WDPA Site ID’s, a persistent identifier for each protected area, provided by UNEP-WCMC.  Agency partners are encouraged to track WDPA Site ID in source datasets to improve the efficiency and accuracy of PAD-US and WDPA updates.

In summary, the relationship between USGS, NOAA, and UNEP-WCMC is as follows:

• USGS is the primary source of U.S. marine and terrestrial protected areas data for the WDPA, developed in collaboration with NOAA and UNEP-WCMC and;

• UNEP-WCMC is the authoritative source of global protected area statistics, through Protected Planet and;

• NOAA is the authoritative source of marine protected areas data in PAD-US and statistics in the U.S. and; 

• USGS is the authoritative source of PAD-US statistics (including protected terrestrial areas for biodiversity, multiple use areas, recreation areas and more).

   

IUCN protected areas in the U.S. are managed by 1,000's of agencies and organizations across the country and include over 38,000 designated sites such as National Parks, National Wildlife Refuges, National Monuments, Wilderness Areas, State Parks, State Wildlife Management Areas, Local Nature Preserves, City Natural Areas, The Nature Conservancy, and other Land Trust Preserves.  The boundaries of these protected places are represented as polygons in the PAD-US, along with informative descriptions such as Unit Name, Manager Name, and Designation Type. 

Given the numerous organizations involved, sites may be added or removed from the WDPA between PAD-US updates.  These differences may reflect actual change in protected area status; however, they also reflect the dynamic nature of spatial data systems (GIS).  Many agencies and nonprofits are working to improve the accuracy of protected area boundaries, the consistency of attributes, and inventory completeness between PAD-US updates. In addition, USGS continually seeks partnerships with agencies and non-profits to review and refine the assignment of conservation measures in PAD-US. 

Data description

It is important to note that many protected areas overlap (for example, the same place on the ground may be a designated Wilderness Area, National Park, and Marine Protected Area).  The statistics presented below describe the complete inventory of GAP Status Code 1 and 2 areas from PAD-US for the WDPA, including overlapping designations.  As mentioned above, UNEP-WCMC is the authoritative source of protection statistics, presented through Protected Planet, for the CBD following an analysis of the WDPA to remove overlaps.

Overall, this WDPA update includes over 38,000 unique protected areas (WDPA records) representing more than 1.3 billion acres (5.5 million square kilometres) primarily managed for biodiversity protection, including overlapping designations.  Fewer than 900 of these sites are Marine Protected Areas; however, they account for more than half of total U.S. protected area.   

Total protected area decreased by about 350 million acres (1.4 million square kilometres) when compared to the WDPA update from PAD-US 1.4. This decrease largely reflects changes in conservation measure assignments for easements and marine areas following major revisions to the NOAA MPA Inventory and National Conservation Easement Database, the sole source of marine protected areas and easement data in PAD-US, respectively. Many changes also reflect refinements in Designation Type and Unit Name provided by data-stewards that resulted in a reduction of about 10,000 existing sites in the WDPA. Many of these places are still represented in the WDPA 2.0 update; however, they are identified differently given these source data refinements.  These changes reflect the dynamic nature of GIS data development.

For example, about 7 million acres of conservation easements are included in the PAD-US 2.0 submission for the WDPA, a decrease of 1 million acres from PAD-US 1.4 following NCED revisions. NOAA also made major refinements to the IUCN Category measure that resulted in a significant reduction in the number of marine areas and total marine acres protected in the WDPA.  Many of the places removed, such as large Fishery Management Sites, will be assessed for contribution to the WDPA in future years, perhaps as Other Effective Area-Based Conservation Measures (OECMs) following recently released guidance.

About 15,000 new areas are included in the WDPA 2.0 update (where WDPAID >= 555651820) protecting more than 180 million acres and representing each designated area separately. It is important to recall these changes include overlapping designations and may reflect an increase in spatially available data, rather than true additions to the U.S. protected area network. 

Federal agencies, especially the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), contributed the vast majority of new area (118 million acres or nearly 500,000 square kilometres); however, this is largely a result of a more complete accounting of all designations for a particular place. For example, the WDPA 2.0 includes significantly overlapping areas such as Marianas Trench Marine National Monument and Mariana Trench National Wildlife Refuge, both provided by FWS for PAD-US, in addition to the Mariana Trench Marine Protected Area provided by NOAA.  The large Mariana Trench MPA was not included in the WDPA update from PAD-US 1.4 as a separate designated area.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), National Park Service (NPS), and U.S. Forest Service (USFS) also added 40 million acres (about 160,000 square kilometres) of designated protected areas (including MPAs that overlap other agency designations) between the PAD-US 1.4 and 2.0 updates for the WDPA.  Nonprofit organizations provided over 5,000 new sites while local governments (counties and cities) submitted nearly 3,000 sites. State areas (administered by Departments of Fish and Wildlife, Natural Resources, or Conservation) added another roughly 2,000 units covering about 10 million acres (40,000 square kilometres). 

Methods

To prepare for translation we begin with a selection of records in the PAD-US 2.0 Combined Marine, Fee, Designation, Easement feature class identified as GAP Status Code 1 or 2 areas. These sites are matched, both spatially and by attributes, to the existing WDPA dataset and WDPA Site ID (persistent identifier provided by UNEP-WCMC and assigned by USGS) are transferred to PAD-US data. As the WDPA is a global dataset, their data standards require simplification to reduce the number of records included, focusing on the protected area site name (NAME) and management (MANG_AUTH).

The WDPA schema allows for multiple managers in MANG_AUTH as well as multiple states in the WDPA location field (SUB_LOC), unlike the separation enforced by PAD-US domains.  PAD-US data are mapped into these fields with PAD-US Manager Name (Mang_Name) and State Name (State_Nm) concatenated into the WDPA schema as needed. The WDPA also tracks the following information loaded directly from PAD-US or categorically assigned:

• WDPA Status Year (STATUS-YR) transferred from PAD-US Date of Establishment (Date_Est)

• WDPA Designation (DESG) and Designation in English (DESIG_ENG) transferred from PAD-US Local Designation Type (Loc_Ds) or applied from PAD-US Unit Name

• WDPA Name (NAME) and Original Name (ORIG_NAME) transferred from PAD-US Unit Name (Unit_Nm, with Designations contained in the name removed following WDPA standard)

• WDPA IUCN Category (IUCN) transferred from PAD-US IUCN Category (IUCN_Cat), except where PAD-US IUCN Category is “Unassigned”, WDPA IUCN Category is “Not Reported”

• GIS derived area (GIS_Area) calculated in square km

• No take info associated with Marine Protected Areas (MPA) transferred from PAD-US Marine feature class, Protection Level (Prot_Lvl) field (provided by NOAA MPA Inventory)

• WDPA Governance Type (GOV_TYPE) from PAD-US Manager Type (Mang_Type, converted to WDPA schema)

• WDPA Owner Type (OWN_TYPE) from PAD-US Owner Type (Own_Type, converted to WDPA Schema)

• WDPA Managing Authority (MANG_AUTH) from PAD-US Manager Name (Mang_Name, converted to WDPA Schema)

• Categorically assign WDPA STATUS as "Designated"

• Categorically assign WDPA MARINE = 1 for MPAs from PAD-US (where DESIG or DESIG_ENG = ‘Marine Protected Area’)

• Categorically assign WDPA PA_DEF = 1 as all areas submitted from PAD-US meet the IUCN definition of Protection (i.e. assigned GAP Status Code 1 or 2 in PAD-US).

• Categorically assign WDPA DESIG_TYPE = National as all sites included from PAD-US are national Designations, this Field in the WDPA tracks things like International RAMSAR sites

• Categorically assign WDPA Parent_ISO3 = USA for All US Sites and US Territories; = ISO 3 letter code for USA Free Association Territories (e.g.. PLW for Palau) 

•  Categorically assign ISO 3 letter codes = USA for All US Sites and US Territories; = ISO 3 Letter codes for each USA Free Association Territories (i.e.. PLW for Palau) 

Contacts

The PAD-US version 2.0 derivative update will be available in the July 2020 version of the WDPA and summarized in the ProtectedPlanet 2020 report, published by UNEP-WCMC.  Go to ProtectedPlanet.net to view or download data. Contact the PAD-US Dataset Manager (jpmagee@usgs.gov) or U.S. Focal Point for the WDPA (jessica.stewart@unep-wcmc.org) for more information.