The Protected Areas Database of the United States (PAD-US) Vision:

We will create a spatially explicit inventory that lets any user – from the general public to professional land managers – know exactly what lands are protected anywhere the United States and allows them to easily use this inventory in conservation, land management, planning, recreation and other uses.

Good data about protected open space in America is critical for conservation and land use planning, decisions about acquiring lands or easements, access to recreation opportunities, program evaluation and much more.

While there has been significant progress inventorying federal, state, local and non-governmental holdings of open lands, we still need improvements that will capture all protected areas and key data about them, and do so reliably, year after year - an ongoing Protected Areas Database of the United States (PAD-US).

In this section of the web site, you'll find information about a proposal for the design of PAD-US which is described more fully in the report, A Map for the Future. An initial version of this data set was published by USGS Gap Analysis Program in April 2009 and with an updated version of that data to be released in May 2010. The Conservation Biology Institute also released a PAD-US edition in the same month. Both of these data sets are using the core attributes and some of the structure proposed in A Map for the Future. Learn more about the USGS GAP PAD-US and about the Conservation Biology Institute PAD-US (CBI Edition)...