Protected Areas Database of the United States (PAD-US) 1.4 Summary Statistics
Dates
Publication Date
2017
Start Date
2005
End Date
2017
Citation
US Geological Survey (USGS) Gap Analysis Project (GAP), 2017, Protected Areas Database of the United States (PAD-US): USGS Core Science, Synthesis, Analytics and Library, http://dx.doi.org/10.5066/F7G73BSZ.
Summary
Note: A new version of these statistics based on PAD-US 2.0 will be made available in 2020 here. This summary of the Protected Areas Database of the United States (PAD-US) is created to provide land managers and decision makers with a general summary of management for conservation, natural resource management and recreation. Area statistics include total acreage, acres by managing agency and percent protection. These summaries are available for the nation and by state. The PAD-US 1.4 Combined feature class (with Marine Protected Areas removed) was modified to remove overlaps, avoiding overestimation in protected area statistic summaries. A Python scripted process prioritized overlapping designations (for example, Wilderness within [...]
Summary
Note: A new version of these statistics based on PAD-US 2.0 will be made available in 2020 here.
This summary of the Protected Areas Database of the United States (PAD-US) is created to provide land managers and decision makers with a general summary of management for conservation, natural resource management and recreation. Area statistics include total acreage, acres by managing agency and percent protection. These summaries are available for the nation and by state. The PAD-US 1.4 Combined feature class (with Marine Protected Areas removed) was modified to remove overlaps, avoiding overestimation in protected area statistic summaries. A Python scripted process prioritized overlapping designations (for example, Wilderness within a National Forest) based upon their relative biodiversity conservation (GAP Status Code) and public access values. Boundaries of interest to stakeholders (LCC, State, Congressional District, County, HUC 12, EcoRegions, City) were incorporated to support data summaries. In addition a "Flattened" version of the PAD-US 1.4 combined file is avaliable without these boundaries, to support user needs.
Users should note, the PAD-US inventory is mostly complete for federal and state lands but only about half of local government and nonprofit areas are currently available. Initiatives are underway to complete the inventory by 2020; however, additional partners are needed. In addition, increases in protected area status between versions of PAD-US may be attributed more to improving the completeness and accuracy of the spatial data than due to actual management actions. USGS provides no legal warranty for the use of this data. While PAD-US is the official aggregation of protected areas ("NGDA", 2017), agencies are the best source of their lands data.
PAD-US data contains many overlapping features. These analysis files were created to remove overlapping features and "flatten" the data. This allows for calculating area statistics, based on Manager Type, Manger Name, Gap Status Code, and Public Access.
See the PAD-US Website https://gapanalysis.usgs.gov/padus/ for more information.
