Spatial analysis and statistical summaries of the Protected Areas Database of the United States (PAD-US) provide land managers and decision makers with a general assessment of management intent for biodiversity protection, natural resource management, and recreation access across the nation. The PAD-US 4.0 Combined Fee, Designation, Easement feature classes (with Military Lands and Tribal Areas from the Proclamation and Other Planning Boundaries feature classes) were modified to remove overlaps, avoiding overestimation in protected area statistics and to support user needs. A Python scripted process ("PADUS4_0_VectorAnalysis_Script_Python3.zip") associated with this data release prioritized overlapping designations...
PAD-US poster maps are available to increase awareness of PAD-US and aid user interpretation. The maps provide a general overview of management, not ownership, as Federal and other designated areas may overlap state, private, and other inholdings. The maps include U.S. States only (not Territories) based on the PAD-US 4.0 Combined Proclamation (Tribal areas and military lands are provided for context), Marine, Fee, Designation, Easement feature class, published by the USGS Science Analytics and Synthesis (SAS), Gap Analysis Project (GAP). The Managers and Federal Managers maps illustrate the land or marine management agency. The Protection Status map depicts GAP Status Code (a measure of management intent to conserve...
The USGS Protected Areas Database of the United States (PAD-US) is the nation's inventory of protected areas, including public land and voluntarily provided private protected areas, identified as an A-16 National Geospatial Data Asset in the Cadastre Theme ( https://ngda-cadastre-geoplatform.hub.arcgis.com/ ). The PAD-US is an ongoing project with several published versions of a spatial database including areas dedicated to the preservation of biological diversity, and other natural (including extraction), recreational, or cultural uses, managed for these purposes through legal or other effective means. The database was originally designed to support biodiversity assessments; however, its scope expanded in recent...
Spatial analysis and statistical summaries of the Protected Areas Database of the United States (PAD-US) provide land managers and decision makers with a general assessment of management intent for biodiversity protection, natural resource management, and outdoor recreation access across the nation. This data release presents results from statistical summaries of the PAD-US 4.0 protection status (by GAP Status Code) and public access status for various land unit boundaries (PAD-US 4.0 Vector Analysis and Summary Statistics). Summary statistics are also available to explore and download from the PAD-US Statistics Dashboard ( https://www.usgs.gov/programs/gap-analysis-project/science/pad-us-statistics ). The vector...
Spatial analysis and statistical summaries of the Protected Areas Database of the United States (PAD-US) provide land managers and decision makers with a general assessment of management intent for biodiversity protection, natural resource management, and recreation access across the nation. The PAD-US 4.0 Combined Fee, Designation, Easement feature classes in the Full Inventory Database (with Military Lands and Tribal Areas from the Proclamation and Other Planning Boundaries feature classes) were modified to prioritize overlapping designations, avoiding massive overestimation in protected area statistics, and simplified by the following PAD-US attributes to support user needs for raster analysis data: Manager...
In addition to the national download available in PAD-US 4.0, data is available by 56 State/Territory boundaries in GBD format. The U.S. Census Bureau is the national steward for legally defined geographic area boundaries for State and Equivalent areas. For more information about Census State boundaries see: https://www.census.gov/geographies/mapping-files/time-series/geo/tiger-geodatabase-file.html.
