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Protected Areas Database of the United States (PAD-US)

Metadata Updated: October 26, 2023

This is series-level metadata for the USGS Protected Areas Database of the United States (PAD-US) data released by the United States Geological Survey (USGS). PAD-US is the nation's inventory of protected areas, including public land and voluntarily provided private protected areas. Starting with version 1.4 PAD-US was 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 years to include all open space public and nonprofit lands and waters. Most are public lands owned in fee (the owner of the property has full and irrevocable ownership of the land); however, permanent and long-term easements, leases, agreements, Congressional (e.g. 'Wilderness Area'), Executive (e.g. 'National Monument'), and administrative designations (e.g. 'Area of Critical Environmental Concern') documented in agency management plans are also included. The PAD-US strives to be a complete inventory of U.S. public land and other protected areas, compiling "best available" data provided by managing agencies and organizations. The PAD-US geodatabase maps and describes areas using thirty-six attributes and five separate feature classes representing the U.S. protected areas network: Fee (ownership parcels), Designation, Easement, Marine, Proclamation and Other Planning Boundaries. An additional Combined feature class includes the full PAD-US inventory to support data management, queries, web mapping services, and analyses. The Feature Class (FeatClass) field in the Combined layer allows users to extract data types as needed. A Federal Data Reference file geodatabase lookup table facilitates the extraction of authoritative federal data provided or recommended by managing agencies from the Combined PAD-US inventory.

For more information regarding the PAD-US dataset please visit, https://www.usgs.gov/programs/gap-analysis-project/science/protected-areas/. For more information about data aggregation please review the PAD-US Data Manual available at https://www.usgs.gov/programs/gap-analysis-project/pad-us-data-manual .

A version history of PAD-US updates is summarized below (See https://www.usgs.gov/programs/gap-analysis-project/pad-us-data-history for more information): - Current Version - January 2022 (Version 3.0) https://doi.org/10.5066/P9Q9LQ4B - Revised - September 2020 (Version 2.1) https://doi.org/10.5066/P92QM3NT - Revised - September 2018 (Version 2.0) https://doi.org/10.5066/P955KPLE - Revised - May 2016 (Version 1.4) https://doi.org/10.5066/F7G73BSZ - Revised - November 2012 (Version 1.3) https://doi.org/10.5066/F79Z92XD - Revised - April 2011 (Version 1.2 - available from the PAD-US: Team pad-us@usgs.gov) - Revised - May 2010 (Version 1.1 - available from the PAD-US: Team pad-us@usgs.gov) - First posted - April 2009 (Version 1.0 - available from the PAD-US: Team pad-us@usgs.gov)

Comparing protected area trends between PAD-US versions is not recommended without consultation with USGS as many changes reflect improvements to agency and organization GIS systems, or conservation and recreation measure classification, rather than actual changes in protected area acquisition on the ground.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

Downloads & Resources

Dates

Metadata Created Date June 1, 2023
Metadata Updated Date October 26, 2023

Metadata Source

Harvested from DOI EDI

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date June 1, 2023
Metadata Updated Date October 26, 2023
Publisher U.S. Geological Survey
Maintainer
@Id http://datainventory.doi.gov/id/dataset/5fc706578cf5689ff8749bd23506ea5c
Identifier USGS:8cef209b-b188-4b1a-8b53-eead67d02da5
Data Last Modified 20220901
Category geospatial
Category Tag 16E15F51 D96E 4051 9124 75665Abdc6Ff "Ecosystem Vulnerability","Biodiversity"
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 010:12
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Metadata Catalog ID https://datainventory.doi.gov/data.json
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id b96fc675-8153-436e-b4c9-215138dde44d
Harvest Source Id 52bfcc16-6e15-478f-809a-b1bc76f1aeda
Harvest Source Title DOI EDI
Metadata Type geospatial
Old Spatial -180.0,-15.3861,180.0,71.312
Publisher Hierarchy White House > U.S. Department of the Interior > U.S. Geological Survey
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 7012cd8e0c13c595bff534ebccce05c9bf259ac0e58e739507b9d58cd0ab4c24
Source Schema Version 1.1
Spatial {"type": "Polygon", "coordinates": -180.0, -15.3861, -180.0, 71.312, 180.0, 71.312, 180.0, -15.3861, -180.0, -15.3861}

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