Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area Landscape Context, Map Packages

This zip file contains five map packages representing data from a variety of landscape metrics used to analyze the landscape context of Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area (BICA). Their names, descriptions and categorization are as follows:

Conservation Status
- PADUS1_3_OwnerName.mpk. This map package depicts land ownership in and around BICA by twelve classes: Tribal Land, Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Bureau of Reclamation (BOR), Dept of Defense (DOD) and Dept of Energy (DOE), Forest Service (USFS), National Park Service (NPS), Private Conservation, State Trust Land, State Fish and Wildlife, State Parks and Recreation, Other State (NHO, DOT, HS, etc.), and The Nature Conservancy (TNC). This is according to the U.S. Geological Survey’s Gap Analysis Program Protected Areas Database for the United States (PAD-US), the official inventory of protected open space in the United States. (U.S. Geological Survey 2013). The PAD-US requests and aggregates data from federal and state sources, and national conservation organizations, in order to assign all lands to one of four biodiversity management status ranks (GAP Status) using established criteria.
The BICA park boundary and 30 km buffer study area are also depicted.

Land Cover
Classes depicted in these map packages are based on a standardized classification from the 2011 National Land Cover Database (NLCD). NLCD characterizes and monitors land cover nation-wide using a series of products created from Landsat satellite data at 30-meter spatial resolution.

- NLCD2011_Level1.mpk
This map package depicts the 30 km buffer study area around BICA and the level 1 land cover classes: Open Water, Developed, Barren/Quarries/Transitional, Forest, Shrub/Scrub, Perennial Ice/Snow, Grassland/Herbaceous, Agriculture, and Wetlands.

- NLCD2011_Level2.mpk
This map package depicts the BICA boundary and 30 km buffer study area as well as the level 2 land cover classes: Open Water; Perennial Snow/Ice; Developed, Open Space; Developed, Low Intensity; Developed, Medium Intensity; Developed, High Intensity; Barren Land; Deciduous Forest; Evergreen Forest; Mixed Forest; Shrub/Scrub; Herbaceous; Hay/Pasture; Cultivated Crops; Woody Wetlands; Emergent Herbaceous Wetlands. Level 2 classes can be collapsed into level 1 classes.

- NLCD2011_LNC.mpk (Landcover Natural v. Converted)
This map package depicts the BICA boundary and 30 km buffer study area as well as the two classes: Converted and Natural. The cover classes from NLCD are grouped into converted lands (comprising developed areas, cultivated crops, and hay/pasture lands) versus natural lands (all other major cover types).

Roads
- AllRoads_rdd.mpk 
This map package displays the patch size distribution of roadless areas in and around the 30 km buffer of BICA, as of 2005. Road metrics were calculated using GIS road data provided by ESRI, through the NPScape initiative. The methods underlying these calculations are available for download in the NPScape Roads Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) at https://irma.nps.gov/DataStore/Reference/Profile/2221834>https://irma.nps.gov/DataStore/Reference/Profile/2221834

Tags: area, bighorn, canyon, context, landscape, map, national, packages, recreation
Organization: Department of the Interior