Blog post barryclark#9

_posts/2019-08-21-how-much-of-the-us-is-parks.md

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+---
+layout: post
+title: How much of the U.S. is dedicated to national parks?
+date: 21-8-2019
+tags: national-park-service
+---
+In the post, [How big are the national parks?](http://goodmorningdata.com/how-big-are-the-national-parks/), we took an initial look at park size. Let's now revisit that topic and get an idea of how park area is distributed across the U.S.
+
+According to [census.gov](https://www.census.gov/geographies/reference-files/2010/geo/state-area.html), the entire area of the United States and its territories is ~2.5 billion acres, or ~3.8 million square miles. Of this area:
+* 27.4% is owned by the federal government (most of this is in the west and Alaksa)
+* 3.5% is in National Park Service sites.
+* 2.1% is in national parks.
+
+>I was fascinated to learn that almost 85% of Nevada is owned by the federal government.
+
+In which states is the majority of the total national park land located?
+![Pie image]({{ site.baseurl }}/assets/09_size_total_park_area_by_state_national_parks.png)
+No surprise that 62.3% of total national park land is located in Alaska. Of the top 10 largest parks, 7 are in Alaska. Californa has including number 5 size-wise, Death Valley National Park. Each of the reamaining top 6 in this chart have at one very large park and number of smaller ones. The remaining states are grouped into the 'Other' category.
+N.B. This plot is technically incorrect. Three of the national parks are in two or more states: Yellowstone is in Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana; Great Smoky Mountains is in North Carolina and Tennessee; and Death Valley is in California and Nevada. A main state where the majority of the area is located was chosen for each park for reporting purposes.
+
+![Chart image]({{ site.baseurl }}/assets/09_size_park_area_pct_of_state_national_parks.png)
+This plot tells us which parks have the most area dedicated to national parks. Alaska wins again with over 7.5% of its land in national parks. Interestingly, Hawaii is in third place for this metric because it is such a small state with over 5% of the land dedicated to national parks.
+
+### Data Sources
+The list of 419 official park units (as of 5/1/2019) broken out by designation comes from the [National Park System](https://www.nps.gov/aboutus/national-park-system.htm){:target="_blank"} page at nps.gov. Park size data is from the report, "Park Acreage Reports (1997 – Last Calendar/Fiscal Year)" found on the [NPS Stats](https://irma.nps.gov/Stats/reports/national){:target="_blank"} website. Individual U.S. state area is from the [State Area Measurements and Internal Point Coordinates](https://www.census.gov/geographies/reference-files/2010/geo/state-area.html) table at census.gov.
+
+### Using the Scripts
+Instructions to run the scripts are found in the readme in the GitHub repository found [here](https://github.com/goodmorningdata/nps){:target="_blank"}.
+
+---