Mind the GAP—But make it better: Improving the U.S. Gap Analysis Project's protected‐area classification system to better reflect biodiversity conservation

Abstract

Abstract Protected areas are foundational to the conservation of biological diversity, and many scientists have called for increased protections in the face of the current extinction and climate‐change crises. Currently in the United States, the most recognized way to track the amount of protected land is the Gap Analysis Project classification system, which we argue is deficient in three ways: it does not, in a systematic way, specify the typical uses and constraints associated with each conservation designation; it is not fine‐tuned or nuanced enough to distinguish the levels of protection among designations within “protected” or “unprotected” areas that allow quite different human activities; and it largely ignores the durability of the designations, failing to account for an area's vulnerability to downsizing, downgrading, or degazetting. We propose a new classification system to address these deficiencies and demonstrate this method for several of the most common federal land designations in the United States.

Keywords

• biodiversity
• classification
• GAP
• protected area
• reserve system
• status code