# Open Protected Areas

Open Protected Areas is an independently reproducible compilation of
protected-area boundaries from authoritative sources that permit the intended
reuse and redistribution.

The product is provenance-first. Every published feature is bound to a source
record, source family, observed version, geometry identity, licence, and
attribution. Missing coverage is represented explicitly and never interpreted
as the absence of protected areas.

## What a release contains

- content-addressed GeoParquet partitions;
- a machine-readable source and licence registry;
- country-level coverage states and limitations;
- schema and classification documentation;
- complete source attribution;
- an immutable manifest with artifact sizes and SHA-256 digests.

Different source partitions may carry different open-data terms. The release
therefore does not assert a single compilation-wide data licence. Consumers
must preserve the notices attached to the partitions they use.

## Coverage semantics

Each jurisdiction is reported as one of:

- `covered` — its declared minimum authoritative source suite is present;
- `partial` — useful qualifying geometry is present but a declared source
  family or scope remains open;
- `unknown` — adequate qualifying geometry or evidence has not yet been established;
- `verified_empty` — an authoritative current register explicitly establishes
  that the in-scope register is empty.

These states describe the release contract, not the legal status of an
individual location. Local due diligence remains necessary for construction,
permitting, or investment decisions.

## Status

The current public release is `ab13b044ff38845dff6abd1a`. Its files,
documentation, streaming map, complete archive, and integrity manifest are
available from the
[Open Protected Areas dataset page](https://data.dynamikorbits.com/products/open-protected-areas).

This repository is the public product and verification boundary. The internal
acquisition and legal-audit repository remains the production authority for
assembling future releases; only exports that pass the release and equivalence
gates enter this repository and the public dataset.

See the [release contract](docs/RELEASE-CONTRACT.md) and
[publication boundary](docs/PUBLICATION-BOUNDARY.md). The latest standalone
verification evidence is recorded in [equivalence](docs/EQUIVALENCE.md).

## Verification client

This repository contains the standalone release verifier and deterministic
archive tools:

```console
uv sync
uv run open-protected-areas verify /path/to/<release-id>
uv run pytest
```

The client checks immutable part hashes, the complete schema, source and
licence identities, geometry validity, feature uniqueness, coverage counts,
and manifest totals. Acquisition and legal-review workflows remain outside
this public-edition boundary.