Monthly Archives: December, 2016

PAD-US Briefing for Dept. of Interior Jan. 9, 2017

Author: padus

Institution: USGS

December 22nd, 2016

The PAD-US team will hold a public briefing on January 9, 2017 for U.S. Department of the Interior staff and others, as part of the DOI Office of Policy Analysis (PPA) Seminar Series. The event is open to the public and remote viewing is available – feel free to share this notice with your networks.

PAD-US Coordinator Lisa Johnson will lead the session, which also includes representatives from the Federal Lands Working Group discussing PAD-US as part of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure, and others talking about how PAD-US helps with wildfire response, recreation, conservation and federal agency data management. An information flyer is available, as is a notice on the DOI website.

The presentation will be Monday, January 9th, 2017 12:15-1:45 PM Eastern Main Interior Building Rachel Carson Room, and can also be live viewed at https://www.doi.gov/events. It will be available afterwards as a video recording at: https://www.doi.gov/ppa/seminar_series/video.

New PAD-US Report Charts Future to 2020

Author: padus

Institution: USGS

December 12th, 2016

A new report sets out a three year plan to complete PAD-US, the national inventory of the location of every public park and protected natural area in the United States.

The report, Completing America’s Inventory of Public Parks and Protected Areas (November 2016), is available for download in summary and detailed versions at www.ProtectedLands.net/vision.

Complete PAD-US data will support job and economic development across America, boost outdoor recreation opportunities, allow for more effective approaches to siting and mitigating energy production and transmission facilities, aid in reducing chronic disease through outdoor exercise, safeguard at-risk wildlife and habitat, encourage more use of local, regional and larger parks for people from all walks of life, and to many other U.S. needs and policies.

The action plan presented in the report calls for completing the current Protected Areas Database of the U.S. (PAD-US) by 2020, and maintaining it thereafter. Parts of PAD-US are close to complete now, but local and regional park data needs additional work, along with system improvements to make the database more effective for users in government and the private and non-governmental sectors. This program has support from a number of agency and nonprofit partners, but needs additional support to succeed.