MPA Inventory 2014

The MPA Inventory is a comprehensive catalog that provides detailed information for existing marine protected areas in the United States. The inventory provides geospatial boundary information (in polygon format) and classification attributes that seek to define the conservation objectives, protection level, governance and related management criteria for all sites in the database. The comprehensive inventory of federal, state and territorial MPA sites provides governments and stakeholders with access to information to make better decisions about the current and future use of place-based conservation. The information also will be used to inform the development of the national system of marine protected areas as required by Executive Order 13158.

The inventory represents a collection of data compiled from various federal, state, tribal and territorial entities to provide a publicly available source of comprehensive information on place-based marine conservation efforts under U.S. federal, state, territorial, local, and tribal jurisdiction.

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This dataset consists of original boundaries as represented by the managing agencies, including any terrestrial components of the protected areas. Only the sub-tidal components of the areas meet the definition of an MPA.

Version Notes:

2014: Added California Coastal Marine National Monument (Pt. Arena-Stornetta Unit) and revised boundaries and zones for Rose Atoll, Marianas Trench and Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monuments. Updated Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary to reflect boundary expansion. Updated boundaries data for Alaska state fishery MPAs, West Hawaii Fishery Management Area, and National Estuarine Research Reserves. Added NMFS Arctic Management Area and Pelagic Sargassum Habitat Restricted Area. Removed Florida Surface Water Improvement and Management sites.

2013: Added new MPA boundaries for California South Coast MLPA region, Oregon Marine Reserves. Updated Maryland Oyster Sanctuaries, National Marine Sanctuary of American Samoa boundaries.

2012: This version contains boundary updates during the 2011 calendar year. Boundaries were added for new MPAs created in California. Boundaries were updated for National Park Service, National Marine Fisheries Service, Washington, Virgin Islands and Wisconsin sites in the MPA Inventory.

2011: This version contains boundary updates during the 2010 calendar year. Boundaries were added for new MPAs created in California. Boundaries for Hawaii, American Samoa, Florida and National Marine Fisheries Service MPAs were added for sites already in the MPA Inventory. All National Park Service and National Estuarine Research Reserve and some National Wildlife Refuge boundaries were updated with original data.

2010: This version contains boundaries for all sites from authoritative sources as updated between 6/2009-12/2009. New data have been added for multiple states and territories, including Alaska, Florida, Maryland, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, US Virgin Islands and Wisconsin. Numerous shipwreck sites represented as latitude/longitude coordinate points were converted to polygons using a 300-meter radius buffer. NMFS sites have been verified against US Code of Federal Regulations.

The MPA Center shall not be held liable for improper or incorrect use of the data described and/or contained in this database. These data and related graphics are not legal documents and are not intended to be used as such.The information contained in these data is dynamic and may change over time. The data are not better than the original sources from which they were derived. It is the responsibility of the data user to use the data appropriately and within the limitations of geospatial data in general, and these data in particular.

These data are publicly accessible and downloadable via http://marineprotectedareas.noaa.gov/dataanalysis/mpainventory/

These data are in the Public domain. The data are not to be used for navigation. For more information, see the accuracy section.

Microsoft Windows 7 Version 6.1 (Build 7601) Service Pack 1; Esri ArcGIS 10.2.2.3552

Data were collected using methods that have unknown accuracy

This version of the MPA Inventory contains geospatial boundaries for 1,623 of the 1,774 identified marine protected areas, and is considered complete as of Oct 2014. New and/or altered sites that are not currently present in the database will be added annually, as data are made available. Please note that site inclusion into the MPA inventory required that the site meet specific definition and conservation criteria that are thoroughly detailed on the http:\\marineprotectedareas.noaa.gov website.

Inventory data were collected from various sources at various spatial scales. The datasets collected were not resampled and are presented in their original form as provided from the contributing agencies, with the exception for a variety of sites that were digitized from coordinates provided by governing agencies.