USGS Gap Analysis Program (GAP) Releases Updated Protected Areas Database of the United States (PAD-US)

PAD-US version 1.1 is a national geodatabase, hosted by USGS-GAP, that represents public land ownership and conservation lands, including voluntarily-provided privately protected areas. The lands included in PAD-US are assigned conservation status codes that both denote the level of biodiversity preservation and indicate other natural, recreational and cultural uses. This version of PAD-US contains updates to the Northeast, Northwest, California, and voluntarily-provided private preserves and conservation easements across the United States. In conjunction with the updated database, a new version of the Protected Areas online viewer has been released and can be accessed at http://gapanalysis.nbii.gov/padus. This new data source is built upon more than two decades of effort by the National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) and Gap Analysis Program (GAP) to facilitate access to and use of biological and stewardship information.