Protected Areas Database of the United States (PAD-US) 3.0 Spatial Analysis and Statistics

Spatial analysis and statistical summaries of the Protected Areas Database of the United States (PAD-US) provide land managers and decision makers with a general assessment of management intent for biodiversity protection, natural resource management, and outdoor recreation access across the nation. This data release presents results from statistical summaries of the PAD-US 3.0 protection status (by GAP Status Code) and public access status for various land unit boundaries (Protected Areas Database of the United States 3.0 Vector Analysis and Summary Statistics). Summary statistics are also available to explore and download (Comma-separated Table [CSV], Microsoft Excel Workbook (.xlsx), Portable Document Format [.pdf] Report) from the PAD-US Lands and Inland Water Statistics Dashboard ( https://www.usgs.gov/programs/gap-analysis-project/science/pad-us-stati… ). The vector GIS analysis file, source data used to summarize statistics for areas of interest to stakeholders (National, State, Department of the Interior Region, Congressional District, County, EcoRegions I-IV, Urban Areas, Landscape Conservation Cooperative), and complete Summary Statistics Tabular Data (CSV) are included in this data release. Raster GIS analysis files are also available for combination with other raster data (Protected Areas Database of the United States (PAD-US) 3.0 Raster Analysis). The PAD-US 3.0 Combined Fee, Designation, Easement feature class in the full inventory, with Military Lands and Tribal Areas from the Proclamation and Other Planning Boundaries feature class (Protected Areas Database of the United States (PAD-US) 3.0, https://doi.org/10.5066/P9Q9LQ4B), was modified to prioritize and remove overlapping management designations, limiting overestimation in protection status or public access statistics and to support user needs for vector and raster analysis data. Analysis files in this data release were clipped to the Census State boundary file to define the extent and fill in areas (largely private land) outside the PAD-US, providing a common denominator for statistical summaries.

A version history of PAD-US Spatial Analysis and Statistics updates is summarized below:
1) First posted - October 2017 (Version 1.4) https://www.sciencebase.gov/catalog/item/5963ea3fe4b0d1f9f059d955
2) Revised - May 2021 (Version 2.1) https://doi.org/10.5066/P9KJLB3Q
3) Revised - January 2022 (Version 3.0) https://doi.org/10.5066/P9KLBB5D