PAD-US 1.1 (CBI Edition)

Protected areas are the cornerstones around which regional, national and international conservation strategies are developed. Through protected area designations, lands and waters are set-aside in-perpetuity to preserve functioning natural ecosystems, act as refuges for species, and maintain ecological processes. Complementary conservation strategies preserve land for the sustainable use of natural resources, or for the protection of significant geologic and cultural features or open space. PAD-US 1.1 (CBI Edition) attempts to include all available spatial data on these places. It is our goal to publish the most comprehensive geospatial data set of U.S. protected areas to date.

PAD-US 1.1 (CBI Edition) provides a rich picture of protected area coverage useful at a variety of scales. It portrays the nation’s protected areas with a standardized spatial geometry and numerous valuable attributes on land ownership, management designations and conservation status (using GAP and IUCN coding systems). It is developed with the purpose of allowing any user – from the general public to professional land managers – to know exactly what lands are protected anywhere the United States and allows them to easily use this inventory for conservation, land management, planning, recreation and other uses. This version should substantially improve our national inventory of protected lands.

Primary Features of PAD-US 1.1 (CBI Edition): 

1. CBI aggregates all available, spatially explicit information on protected areas in the continental U.S., Alaska and Hawaii. This version integrates the CBI PAD 4.5, PAD-US 1.0 and TNC Secured Lands for Eastern North America datasets. Relying on a strong network of data providers, a substantial number of new federal, state, local and private protected area polygons are also added to our national portfolio, including aggregations for the states of: VA, CO, FL, IA, IN, VT, NH, MA, MN, WI, MO and AR. We also publish a new compilation of TNC preserves and conservation easements. We do not include protected areas data for U.S. territories at this time.

2. CBI supports free downloads of PAD-US 1.1 (CBI Edition) in multiple formats, including an ESRI GeoDatabase, shapefile and layer packages. Users can visualize and download the entire national data set or individual states. Using our Data Basin Protected Areas Center tools, PAD-US 1.1 (CBI Edition) data can also be combined with other conservation related datasets right on this site.

3. CBI maintains high standards regarding consistent and comprehensive attribution of protected area attributes, such as ownership, management responsibilities, designations, and conservation intent.  For example, secondary and tertiary designations are included to represent protected lands with multiple management categories. This allows for precise representation of complex conservations patterns (e.g., a Wilderness Area within a National Forest). 

4. CBI retains and publishes all information from our source data regarding the agencies that own and manage each protected area, along with local designations and local names. CBI also includes generalized and standardized fields to facilitate easy searches of common protected area designations and ownerships across political boundaries. The PAD-US 1.1  (CBI Edition) User Guide provides dataset organization and search tips. 

5. CBI publishes one “flat file” of U.S. Protected Areas by carefully correcting the minor overlaps and gaps that result from the aggregation of multiple datasets.  These errors are reconciled with permission from the source. Error correction is guided by set standards outlined in our Standards and Procedures document. Where possible, we also attempt to identify and correct major topology corrections in collaboration with the original source of the data.

6. CBI identifies and aggregates unprotected lands into a “private lands matrix” feature. A standardized base map of shorelines/boundaries is used to identify these areas. It is developed using the NOAA Medium Resolution Shoreline-contiguous US, NAD 83 Alaska and NAD 83 Hawaii coast. The private lands matrix provides users an opportunity to perform acreage calculations of unprotected land surrounding or within protected areas ("inholdings"). The national boundary can also be utilized for spatial representation purposes. This feature can be easily removed for those users who prefer to only represent protected lands.

Click here to view:

• PAD-US 1.1 (CBI Edition) Brochure
• User Guide for PAD-US 1.1 (CBI Edition)
• Frequently Asked Questions about PAD-US 1.1 (CBI Edition)
• Standards and Procedures for PAD-US 1.1 (CBI Edition)
• Standard Designation Domains for PAD-US 1.1 (CBI Edition)