PAD-US Protected Lands Screener — Owner & GAP Status

Protected lands + public land ownership screener. Give it a list of coordinates and it does a server-side point-in-polygon check against the USGS PAD-US (Protected Areas Database of the United States — ~440,000 protected-area polygons) and returns, for each point: whether it sits on protected land, the owner/manager agency, the manager type (Federal / State / Local / Private / NGO), the designation (National Park, National Forest, Wilderness Area, State Park, Conservation Easement, and 60+ more), the GAP status code (1–4 biodiversity-protection level), and public access (Open / Restricted / Closed). All PAD-US coded values are translated from raw codes to human-readable labels.

One clean, billable row per asset — even when the point is on plain private land (a useful "clear" result).

Who it's for

• Renewable & mineral siting teams — screen solar/wind/transmission/mining coordinates for federal land, wilderness, refuges and conservation status before scoping a project.
• Land acquisition, brokers & title — flag whether a parcel centroid is public land, who owns/manages it, and whether public access is restricted or closed.
• ESG / environmental consultants — Phase-I and biodiversity due-diligence: identify GAP 1–2 conservation lands and the responsible agency near a site.
• GIS & data teams — batch-enrich any address/parcel list with authoritative land-ownership and protected-status attributes without hosting the 440k-polygon dataset yourself.

Example input

{
  "assets": [
    { "lat": 44.4605, "lon": -110.8281, "label": "Old Faithful, Yellowstone NP" },
    { "lat": 32.7791, "lon": -96.8000, "label": "Downtown Dallas TX" }
  ],
  "maxAssets": 500
}

The first point returns on_protected_land: true, manager_agency: "National Park Service", manager_type: "Federal", designation_type: "National Park", gap_status_code: "1", public_access: "Open Access", unit_name: "Yellowstone National Park". The second returns on_protected_land: false (private/urban land).

Output fields (one row per asset)

asset_label, asset_lat, asset_lon, on_protected_land, manager_agency, manager_type, owner_name, designation_type, gap_status_code, gap_status_label, public_access, unit_name, acres, is_federal_land, is_conservation_protected, overlapping_unit_count, overlapping_units, state_name, error, disclaimer, source_url, checked_at.

A single point can fall inside several overlapping PAD-US units (e.g. a fee tract and a wilderness designation and a proclamation boundary). The flat row reports the primary unit (strongest biodiversity mandate, then most significant designation, then largest acreage); every overlapping unit is also listed in overlapping_units, and is_federal_land / is_conservation_protected reflect any overlapping unit.

Use as an MCP tool

This actor is callable by AI agents (Claude, Cursor, etc.) via mcp.apify.com. Its typed input (assets[]{lat,lon,label}) and field-level output descriptions make it a clean, chainable "is this coordinate on protected/public land, and who manages it?" tool for siting, land-diligence and geospatial agents.

FAQ

Is a point on public land / a national park? Yes — pass its coordinate and read on_protected_land, unit_name, manager_agency and manager_type.

Who owns or manages this land? owner_name + manager_agency (decoded agency names) and owner/manager_type (Federal/State/Local/Private/NGO).

What is the GAP status of a coordinate? gap_status_code (1–4) and gap_status_label. GAP 1–2 = managed for biodiversity; is_conservation_protected is a one-glance boolean for that.

Is this federal land? is_federal_land is true if any overlapping unit is federally owned or managed.

How current / authoritative is it? This is an informational PAD-US intersection screen, not an official land-status determination. PAD-US is a compiled national inventory maintained by the USGS Gap Analysis Project and can lag ground truth. The authoritative source is the managing agency (NPS, USFS, BLM, USFWS, or the state/local/private manager). Confirm ownership, access and designation with the managing agency and a title/survey professional before any siting, acquisition, permitting, or transaction decision.

Source

USGS PAD-US "Manager_Name" ArcGIS FeatureServer, layer 0: https://services.arcgis.com/v01gqwM5QqNysAAi/arcgis/rest/services/Manager_Name/FeatureServer/0