Summary

Description

The Gap Analysis Program (GAP) is an element of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). GAP helps to implement the Department of Interior?s goals of inventory, monitoring, research, and information transfer. GAP has three primary goals: 1 Identify conservation gaps that help keep common species common; 2 Provide conservation information to the public so that informed resource management decisions can be made; and 3 Facilitate the application of GAP data and analysis to specific resource management activities. To implement these goals, GAP carries out the following objectives: --Map the land cover of the United States --Map predicted distributions of vertebrate species for the U.S. --Map the location, ownership and stewardship of protected areas --Document the representation of vertebrate species and land cover types in areas managed for the long-term maintenance of biodiversity --Provide this information to the public and those entities charged with land use research, policy, planning, and management --Build institutional cooperation in the application of this information to state and regional management activities. GAP provides the following data and web services: The Protected Areas Database of the United States (PAD-US) is a geodatabase that illustrates and describes public land ownership, management and other conservation lands, including voluntarily provided privately protected areas. The PADUS GAP Status Layer web service can be found at http://gis1.usgs.gov/arcgis/rest/services/gap/PADUS_Status/MapServer . The Land Cover Data creates a seamless data set for the contiguous United States from the four regional Gap Analysis Projects and the LANDFIRE project. The Raster data in both ArcGIS Grid and ERDAS Imagine format is available for download at http://gis1.usgs.gov/csas/gap/viewer/land_cover/Map.aspx . In addition to the raster datasets the data is available in Web Mapping Services (WMS) format for each of the six NVC classification levels (Class, Subclass, Formation, Division, Macrogroup, Ecological System) at the following links. http://gis1.usgs.gov/arcgis/rest/services/gap/GAP_Land_Cover_NVC_Class_Landuse/MapServer http://gis1.usgs.gov/arcgis/rest/services/gap/GAP_Land_Cover_NVC_Subclass_Landuse/MapServer http://gis1.usgs.gov/arcgis/rest/services/gap/GAP_Land_Cover_NVC_Formation_Landuse/MapServer http://gis1.usgs.gov/arcgis/rest/services/gap/GAP_Land_Cover_NVC_Division_Landuse/MapServer http://gis1.usgs.gov/arcgis/rest/services/gap/GAP_Land_Cover_NVC_Macrogroup_Landuse/MapServer http://gis1.usgs.gov/arcgis/rest/services/gap/GAP_Land_Cover_Ecological_Systems_Landuse/MapServer The GAP species range data show a coarse representation of the total areal extent of a species or the geographic limits within which a species can be found (Morrison and Hall 2002). The GAP species distribution models represent the areas where species are predicted to occur based on habitat associations. A full report documenting the parameters used in each species model can be found via: http://gis1.usgs.gov/csas/gap/viewer/species/Map.aspx Web map services for species distribution models can be accessed from: http://gis1.usgs.gov/arcgis/rest/services/NAT_Species_Birds http://gis1.usgs.gov/arcgis/rest/services/NAT_Species_Mammals http://gis1.usgs.gov/arcgis/rest/services/NAT_Species_Amphibians http://gis1.usgs.gov/arcgis/rest/services/NAT_Species_Reptiles A table listing all of GAP's available web map services can be found here: http://gapanalysis.usgs.gov/species/data/web-map-services/