Wilderness GIS Data Standards and Implementation Guidelines

Drake, Erin

This data standard is a GIS data standard for Legislated Wilderness and Other Categories of Wilderness including Implementation Guidelines on use. Protecting, stewarding, and preserving our wilderness areas remains fundamental to our understanding of the nationally significant landscapes we steward. The ability to use geographic information systems (GIS) to help manage all aspects of park operations, including wilderness areas, provides the National Park Service with a powerful tool. In order to take advantage of this tool to adequately plan and maintain wilderness data among other daily activities, we must maintain accurate spatial information for wilderness areas. The National Park Service Wilderness Spatial Data Standards are intended to provide a framework for organizing our wilderness spatial data, documenting its lineage and facilitating data integration as well as data sharing. The standards will help insure spatial data consistency, quality and accuracy and will assist in program direction, reporting and information requests. As a spatial data standard, the standards address two wilderness data types: Legislated Wilderness (i.e., designated wilderness) and Other Categories of Wilderness (i.e., eligible, proposed, recommended, and potential wilderness). To accompany the standards themselves a data model, in the form of a GeoDatabase, has been created to assist users in complying with the standards, providing a platform for parks/regions/programs to quickly migrate data into the standards to accommodate data sharing. This standards document is an adopted NPS GIS data standard. This standard is sponsored by the NPS Wilderness Stewardship Division. GIS implementation support provided by NPS Wildland Fire Program.