- GAP created base maps showing the states (including Montana, illustrated here), main cities, some of the primary roads to orient people, and protected areas and national forests, Indian reservations, Department of Defense lands, Bureau of Land Management lands, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service refuges, and so forth.
From April through July 2011, Secretary Salazar and senior DOI officials visited governors and other high-ranking state resource staff throughout the nation to discuss President Obama’s Americas Great Outdoors (AGO) Initiative. The Secretary’s briefing materials included USGS Gap Analysis Program (GAP) maps illustrating each state’s federal and state land ownership boundaries.
GAP maps used by the Secretary and his team were created using GAP’s Protected Areas Database of the United States (PAD-US) and Species Distribution Database. This is all in keeping with the GAP objective of identifying gaps in the biological diversity in the present network of conservation areas across the country.
To learn more, read the entire article in the USGS @Access Fall 2011 issue.
