Mapping Environmental Justice in Delaware County Pennsylvania

Mapping Environmental Justice in Delaware County Pennsylvania

• Use as a model for a similar project in Delaware County Ohio
• What is missing?  Not applicable?
• Changes in emphasis and organization
• Personal interests of students in the class in regards to the different topics

Contents:

Preface

A note about the mapping process
Figure 1: Municipalities

Introduction: Environmental Justice

From Here to There: Transportation and Industrial History
Figure 2:  Transportation

Natural Setting: Green Spaces and Waterways
Figure 3:  Land Cover

Demographic Distributions: Income, Race, Education, Unemployment and Age
Figure 4:  Income
Figure 5:  Race
Figure 6:  Unemployment
Figure 7:  Education
Figure 8:  Age

Pollution Flow: Air and Water
Figure 9:  Air and Water Pollution

Current Waste Disposal Sites: Landfills and Incinerators
Figure 10:  Waste

Abandoned Waste: Superfund Sites and Inactive Landfills
Figure 11:   Abandoned Waste

Hot Spots: Top 15 polluters in the County
Figure 12:  Top Fifteen Polluters

Conclusion: What does this mean for Delaware County?

Appendix 1: Glossary
Appendix 2: Environmental Organizations in Delaware County
Notes…

M J 12: Introduction to Course, Course Projects, and Course Blogs

On Pareidolia

Geography 355: a follow up to Geography 222 & 353

But no prereq!  Why?  some problems with this!
Best to take 222 then 353 then 355 but any combination OK

Different ways to teach this course:

Lectures + series of exercises
Lectures + one big exercise broken into parts (Geog 353)

Or get away from those formats:

Student presentations of readings
Self guided tutorial
Applied, real-world group project (practicum, service learning, etc.)

Exhibit A: GIS Texts for course and software (ArcGIS)

GIS: set of concepts and hardware and software
Data input, analysis, output
Capabilities and applications expanding exponentially

ex) Delaware Data in ArcGIS

Data Input (how?)
Data Layers (examples)
Data analysis (property owners along a particular trail)
Data output (printer)

Course goal: become familiar (or more familiar) with GIS concepts, functionality, software

Exhibit B: Delaware Recreational Trail and Green Spaces materials; Environmental Justice materials; SNC Projects (2008, Fall)

GIS is so popular because it is useful: many applications, but GIS applications are a lot of work!

Data input: where is data from?  format?  what data do you need?
Analysis: how analytical capabilities of GIS solve real problems?
Output: on computer screen?  paper?  WWW?  To what audience?

The complexities of an actual application

Knowing enough about an application so that you can use GIS: experts
The human context: working in a group, project politics, costs involved, institutions within which GIS is supposed to function

Course Goal: Learn that GIS is much more than a bunch of software functions in Arc GIS

The goal this semester is to bring together exhibits A and B

Learn about GIS as a software tool: its functions, capabilities
Apply what we learn to a real world project

In working through a real world application we will learn what GIS is really about much more than just software and hardware

Geography 353: Scripted project, all figured out for you, me active, you more passive

Useful for learning…but limited…just following instructions

This course: active learning for all of us

We will work as a group (or in sub groups) throughout the semester
You will be active in shaping what we do and how we do it
The success of the course depends on your engagement in the course
You will push yourself and me to get the most you can get out of this course

Problems: anxiety provoking, potential for disorder and problems, unmotivated & passive students

Benefits: learn a lot in “real world” setting with real problems to solve, forced to move beyond passive lump in class, maybe even have an impact

Field trip! (ok, carpet trip)

Delaware Trails Project

OWU students: smart, motivated, engaged; and small class sizes

Upper level courses should involve real engagement (so that is what I expect)

Bottom Line: for this course to work:

Active participation by all students: lumpen passivity not allowed

Collaboration with each other and OWU and community folks

Students should expect to play an active and vital role in the class and in the project!

If you don’t like that kind of class, then drop!

Review: Syllabus and Schedule and General Course Structure (blog)

Create your Course Blog

1) go to wordpress.com

2) sign up and create a blog

3) set up the look of the blog and create some categories

Class Readings

Class Project

Class Exercises

Evaluations

Personal

4) new post: introduction to you

5) new post: Schurmann reading (ch. 1) notes, comments, questions

6) new post: One GIS application area of interest, with at least 3 links & graphics

7) email me the URL to your Blog by 10am Wednesday: thus all the stuff above is due then.

Geography 355: Spring 2009

I have updated the course syllabus and schedule (see the tabs above) for the Spring of 2009.

I plan to relate our course projects to the 2008-09 Sagan National Colloquium (“Cultivating a Green Campus“) and work students completed in last year’s Geography 355 course.  Thus a focus on campus sustainability, “green” and “environmental justice” issues on and around campus.

Work from last year can be reviewed in earlier postings on this blog and individual student blogs from last year (see the Blogroll section to the right).

OrthoPhoto Fix

A quick fix should make the orthophotos (air images) align properly with the rest of the Delaware GIS data:

The problem is that the units of measurement for the orthophotos is in meters, and the units of measurement for the other Delaware GIS data is feet. So change the units of the orthophoto files to feet and the problem should go away:

1. open ArcMap and create a new empty project

2. add the road centerlines: Delaware Data/Delaware Roads folder

3. from the Tools menu select ArcCatalog

4. select the Delaware Data folder in the left window in ArcCatalog

5. double click on the OrthophotoAp2006 folder in the right window in ArcCatalog

6. click once on Delaware_2006_Half-ft_North.sid in the right window in ArcCatalog

7. from the File menu select Properties…

8. a window will pop up: Raster Dataset Properties

9. scroll down to Spatial Reference and click on the Edit button

10. click the Modify button on the window that opens

11. in the Linear Unit box select Foot. Hit OK, then OK, then OK to get back to ArcCatalog.

12. repeat with the Delaware_2006_Half-ft_North.sid file (repeat steps 6 to 11).

Add the orthophoto to the ArcMap file with the road center line. The orthophoto should align properly.

I will put a lower resolution orthophoto on the computers, as the two high res files (north and south) take a long time to open on our older, white computers. When that is complete, you will have to go through the same process as above to change the units from meters to feet. I will let you know when that happens.

Even More Schedule Updates

Yes, once again I have made some changes to the Geography 355 schedule.

For Monday January 21 we will review the two Longley chapters, the future schedule for readings and presentations, and begin to look at our course project.

Update to Course Schedule

I adjusted the course schedule, moving a few readings a bit sooner and those changes are reflected on the blog course schedule.  Please rely on the blog schedule rather than the paper copy (handed out Monday).

Geography 355: GIS: Blog, Syllabus, Schedule Spring 2008

The blog for Geography 355 including the course syllabus and schedule are up and ready to go for Spring of 2008.

John K.