National Wilderness Preservation System

Jan 3, 2012 (Last modified Nov 8, 2019)
Uploaded by Lisa Ronald
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Description:
Wilderness areas are federally-owned public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service, Forest Service, and National Park Service. When the National Wilderness Preservation System started in 1964, only 54 wilderness areas were included. Since then, the system has grown nearly every year to include more than 800.

This dataset is managed by Wilderness Connect, a long-standing project through the University of Montana, and is hosted in ArcGIS Online as both a tile service and a feature service. Wilderness Connect maintains and updates wilderness boundary data annually using official national agency wilderness GIS sources and acreage data from agency Realty Offices. More frequent updates occur as needed to add newly designated or expanded areas. As such, this consistently remains the most current and accurate wilderness dataset available online.

The tile service is a faster performing format, but is limited to world-cities scales. The feature service is full featured and is available from world-room scales. The feature service contains both wilderness polygons as well as non-federal lands within wilderness (private, state, local government, or tribal inholdings and edgeholdings). A recommended practice is to pair these services together, using the tile service for world-cities display and the feature service for city-room display, queries and popups.

To learn more about wilderness areas, visit Wilderness Connect, the authoritative source for wilderness information online, or email Lisa Ronald, lisa@wilderness.net.
Data Provided By:

Lisa Ronald, Wilderness Institute, University of Montana

Map Service URL:
https://tiles.arcgis.com/tiles/ERdCHt0sNM6dENSD/arcgis/rest/services/Wilderness_in_the_United_States_100919/MapServer/
Content date:
not specified
Citation:

Title: National Wilderness Preservation System


Credits: Wilderness Institute, University of Montana


Publication/Update Date: Feature-level metadata including the date of update for specific wilderness polygons and the source of each are available online.


Publisher: Wilderness Institute, University of Montana

Contact Organization:
Lisa Ronald, Wilderness Institute, University of Montana, 406-396-3607, lisa@wilderness.net
Contact Person(s):
Use Constraints:
This data is available for public use of any kind. Crediting Wilderness Connect is requested. Wilderness Connect maintains and updates wilderness boundary data annually using official national agency wilderness GIS sources and acreage data from agency Realty Offices. Inholding and edgeholding data are updated annually by extracting local government lands, state government lands, private lands and tribal lands inside wilderness boundaries from the Bureau of Land Management’s National Surface Management Agency Area Polygons - National Geospatial Data Asset (NGDA).
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FGDC Standard Metadata XML
Click here to see the full FGDC XML file that was created in Data Basin for this layer.
Original Metadata XML
Click here to see the full XML file that was originally uploaded with this layer.
This dataset is visible to everyone
Dataset Type:
External Map Service (ArcGIS)
Tags:
wilderness, national wilderness preservation system, wild lands
Bookmarked by 1 Member , 3 Groups
Included in 6 Public Maps , 32 Private Maps
Included in 5 Public Galleries
https://wilderness.net/visit-wilderness/gis-gps.php

About the Uploader

Lisa Ronald
Wildlands Communications Director with Wilderness Institute

For more than 15 years, I have been a motivated environmental communications linchpin with experience developing national media strategies and forging diverse partnerships that create long-lasting place-based connections and ultimately protect wild places. My work includes creating and overseeing...