Best Practices
The following information summarizes some of the more complete available protected areas inventories.
Current National Inventories
As of mid-2010, two national inventories are maintained, one by the USGS Gap Analysis Program (PAD-US), and one by the Conservation Biology Institute (PAD-US, CBI Edition). Learn more about these two projects.
State Inventories
For more information, visit our Find Data section. Below is information from several states that have very complete inventories:
California - The California Protected Areas Database (CPAD) has its own website with download information, a web map browser and extensive documentation about the data, including sample maps. CPAD covers 49 million acres owned by over 850 agencies (mapped mostly from tax parcels), and is published by GreenInfo Network.
Colorado - COMaP (Colorado Ownership Management and Protection) is the state's inventory program, which is housed at Colorado State University's Natural Resource Ecology Lab. The most recent version was published in late 2008 and includes substantial local government and NGO holdings, in addition to state and federal lands. A detailed version of the data set is available to selected users, and a public web map portal from the Co. Division of Wildlife is also available.
Great Lakes region - CARL is maintained by Ducks Unlimited as a regional data set for several Great Lakes states, complete with online browser.
Massachusetts - The state's Protected and Recreational Open Space Data Layer is a comprehensive, parcel based system published by MassGIS, the state agency responsible for GIS. The data web site has rich information on the data set and you can subscribe to a very informative newsletter.
Montana - Easement data (along with all other protected lands information) is fully available in this state, where public data access to it is required by law. The state's Land Stewardship data center has many good resources, along with download links.
Virginia - The Virginia Dept. of Conservation and Recreation maintains the state's Conservation Lands Database, which includes protected areas data for federal, state and regional agencies and organizations, and also includes significant easement holdings.