Protected Areas - Land and Marine
Protected Areas – Land:  The Protected Areas Database of the United States (PAD-US) is a geodatabase that illustrates and describes public land ownership, management and conservation lands nationally, including voluntarily provided privately protected areas. 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. PAD-US version 1.2 updates include: 1) National Park Service (NPS) boundaries and GAP Status Code review in cooperation with NPScape and NPS Lands. 2) Department of Defense (DOD) boundaries in cooperation with DOD Partners in Flight 3) Official (member and eligible only) Marine Protected Areas as aggregated and accepted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). 4)The Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) National Landscape Conservation System (NLCS) authoritative boundaries in cooperation with NLCS policy representitives and the Lands Division. Note: NLCS National Trails and Wild and Scenic Rivers were not updated as they are managed as Line files; however, PADUS already contained many of these protected areas. 5) Modified or newly created Wilderness Area boundaries created by The Omnibus Public Lands Act of 2009 in cooperation with Wilderness.net. 6) Protected areas in The US Virgin Islands 7) Protected areas in the Pacific Islands (Micronesia) 8) Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife protected areas
Protected Areas – Marine: USGS Gap Analysis Program (GAP) translated official (member and eligible) MPAs from the NOAA MPA Inventory (March 2010) into the Protected Areas Database of the United States (PADUS) schema, applied conservation measures and identified overlaps between MPAs and PADUS to support conservation assessments and planning. The NOAA MPA Inventory (http://www.mpa.gov/) is a comprehensive catalog that provides detailed information for existing marine protected areas in the United States. This Inventory consists of original boundaries as represented by the managing agencies, including terrestrial components of those protected areas. Only the sub-tidal area of Member and Eligible MPAs meet the definition of a MPA as, "any area of the marine environment that has been reserved by federal, state, territorial, tribal, or local laws or regulations to provide lasting protection for part or all of the natural and cultural resources therein." The inventory provides geospatial boundary information (in polygon format) and classification attributes that seek to define the conservation objectives, protection level, governance and related management criteria for all sites in the database. To complement PADUS Core Attributes, GAP transferred many marine specific attributes from the NOAA MPA Inventory into the PADUS geodatabase. The NOAA MPA Inventory is used to inform the development of the national system of marine protected areas as required by Executive Order 13158. GAP included MPAs to complement the more terrestrially based PADUS to provide governments and stakeholders with access to information to make conservation decisions.
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