Description

The Protected Areas Database of the United States (PAD-US) is a geodatabase, managed by U. S. Geological Survey Gap Analysis Program, that illustrates and describes public land ownership, management and other conservation lands, including voluntarily provided privately protected areas. The geodatabase contains four feature classes such as, Marine Protected Areas (MPA) and Easements that each contains uniquely associated attributes. These two feature classes are combined with the PAD-US Fee feature class to provide a full inventory of protected areas in a common schema (i.e. Combined file). Legitimate and other protected area overlaps exist in the full inventory, with Easements loaded on top of Fee and MPAs under both. Parcel data within a protected area are dissolved in this file that powers the PAD-US Viewer. As overlaps exist, GAP creates separate analytical layers to summarize area statistics for "GAP Status Code" and "Owner Name". Contact the PAD-US Coordinator for more information. The lands included in PAD-US are assigned conservation measures that qualify their intent to manage lands for the preservation of biological diversity and to other natural, recreational and cultural uses; managed for these purposes through legal or other effective means. The geodatabase includes: 1) Geographic boundaries of public land ownership and voluntarily provided private conservation lands (e.g., Nature Conservancy Preserves); 2) The combination land owner, land manager, management designation or type, parcel name, GIS Acres and source of geographic information of each mapped land unit 3) GAP Status Code conservation measure of each parcel based on USGS National Gap Analysis Program (GAP) protection level categories which provide a measurement of management intent for long-term biodiversity conservation 4) IUCN category for a protected area's inclusion into UNEP-World Conservation Monitoring Centre's World Database for Protected Areas. IUCN protected areas are defined as, "A clearly defined geographical space, recognized, dedicated and managed, through legal or other effective means, to achieve the long-term conservation of nature with associated ecosystem services and cultural values" and are categorized following a classification scheme available through USGS GAP; 5) World Database of Protected Areas (WDPA) Site Codes linking the multiple parcels of a single protected area in PAD-US and connecting them to the Global Community. The geodatabase contains a Marine Protected Area (MPA) feature class and Easements feature class, each with uniquely associated attribute. These two feature classes are combined with the PAD-US fee feature class with standard PAD-US attributes to provide a full inventory of protected areas in a common schema. As legitimate and other overlaps exist in the combined inventory GAP creates separate analytical layers to obtain area statistics for "GAP Status Code" and "Owner Name". PAD-US version 1.3 Combined updates include: 1) State, local government and private protected area updates delivered September 2011 from PAD-US State Data Stewards: CO (Colorado State University), FL (Florida Natural Areas Inventory), ID (Idaho Fish and Game), MA (The Commonwealth's Office of Geographic Information Systems, MassGIS), MO (University of Missouri, MoRAP), MT (Montana Natural Heritage Program), NM (Natural Heritage New Mexico), OR (Oregon Natural Heritage Program), VA (Department of Conservation and Recreation, Virginia Natural Heritage Program). 2) Select local government (i.e. county, city) protected areas (3,632) across the country (to complement the current PAD-US inventory) aggregated by the Trust for Public Land (TPL) for their Conservation Almanac that tracks the conservation finance movement across the country. 3) A new Date of Establishment field that identifies the year an area was designated or otherwise protected, attributed for 86% of GAP Status Code 1 and 2 protected areas. Additional dates will be provided in future updates. 4) A national wilderness area update from wilderness.net 5) The Access field that describes public access to protected areas as defined by data stewards or categorical assignment by Primary Designation Type. . The new Access Source field documents local vs. categorical assignments. See the PAD-US Standard Manual for more information: gapanalysis.usgs.gov/padus 6) The transfer of conservation measures (i.e. GAP Status Codes, IUCN Categories) and documentation (i.e. GAP Code Source, GAP Code Date) from PAD-US version 1.2 or categorical assignments (see PAD-US Standard) when not provided by data stewards 7) Integration of non-sensitive National Conservation Easement Database (NCED) easements from August 2011, July 2012 with PAD-US version 1.2 easements. Duplicates were removed, unless 'Stacked' = Y and multiple easements exist. 8) Unique ID's transferred from NCED or requested for new easements. NCED and PAD-US are linked via Source UID in the PAD-US version 1.3 Easement feature class. 9) Official (member and eligible) MPAs from the NOAA MPA Inventory (March 2011, http://marineprotectedareas.noaa.gov/) translated into the PAD-US schema with conservation measures transferred from PAD-US version 1.2 or categorically assigned to new protected areas. Contact the PAD-US Coordinator for documentation of categorical GAP Status Code assignments for MPAs. 10) Identified MPA records that overlap existing protected areas in the PAD-US Fee feature class (i.e. PADUS Overlap field in MPA feature class). For example, many National Wildlife Refuges and National Parks are also MPAs and are represented in the PAD-US MPA and Fee feature classes.

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