Income, Poverty, and SNAP - Fun with GIS

Spokane: downtown waterfalls, gondolas, and homelessness, all in the same picture. I moved out here in 2004. When I first moved, I bought a nice house a block away from broadway foods on Mallon St. When I moved in, I realized why I purchased it for 83k. I got into a fist fight with a neighbor, had a homeless man sleeping in my garage (fucker split his canned ravioli IN my jeep, we got to be friends later), and yet 3 blocks over it was a row of half million dollar houses. Spokane is a conundrum, and analyzing data seems to be difficult. Nothing really surprising about the population statistics. I have to say for the most part, the GIS work wasn't surprising, people move to an area, build nice houses, they get older, build new nicer houses on the edge of town, rinse, repeat. There is a reason most of the hoods are near the train tracks. I did find it interesting that a good portion of the west plains was below the poverty line. I'm curious to find out more about how the data is reported by the fed, and inevitably how this method fucks over the people it "aims" to protect. Eat more carbs!

 

Station Fire

 Paul Reilly

Station Fire Project

Hominins emerged 5-7 million years ago, and represent over 20 species. Our genus (Homo) appeared approximately 2.4 mya, and the hunting and gathering (foraging) way of life sustained our genus for the vast majority of time (99.6%). Studies estimate that (73%) of foraging societies derive between 35-44% of sustenance from plant foods (Cordain et al. 2005). Clearly, the importance of foraged plant foods in meeting the nutritional requirements of humans is undeniable.

Around 12,000 years ago, an explosion of agricultural practices worldwide, known as the Neolithic Revolution (Childe 1936) coincides with a dramatic increase in artifact remains which is interpreted as the beginning of a continuous period of population growth (Bocquet-Appeal 2011). A shift from foraging to food production occurred nearly instantaneously, and with this shift came numerous physical and social changes. 

The chronic degenerative diseases deemed “the diseases of civilization” are among the leading causes of death of modern people (CDC 2010).  These conditions, including coronary heart disease, obesity, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, cancers, autoimmune disease, and osteoporosis are rare or absent in pre-agricultural (and non-westernized) societies (Carrera-Basto et al. 2011). The so called diseases-of-civilization arose in part due to discordance between the genome and lifestyle (Cordain 2000). Today’s native populations have epidemic levels of health problems, and every indicator shows native populations are unhealthier than the general population (IHS 1996). As an effort to mitigate risk of disease, there are a number of initiatives espousing the benefits of incorporating foraged food into the diet (CDC: TFP). 

The climate and resource availability of California supported a number of different indigenous peoples since prehistory. Since western contact, the overall health of California’s native people has been steadily declining (IHS 1996). Incorporating a lifestyle which promotes foraging is more important now than any other time in history. Resources for indigenous people are limited statewide, and loss of resources is occurring at a rapid pace.

For the purpose of this project, I wanted to examine how the 2009 station fire of California, the largest in Californian history, could impact the foraging capacity of California’s natives. I chose to look at the fire boundaries in comparison to reservations, overall burn length, the overall change of basal vegetation, and percent change of canopy cover.

Overall, the intensity of the burn greatly affected the vegetation composition within the boundaries of the 2009 Station fire. Although no federally recognized reservations exist with the boundary, indigenous people such as the Serrano, would have utilized the area heavily for foraging.

Fire, especially catastrophic fire, such as the Station fire, generally allow for the spread of invasive plants. In looking at the map, the overall change in composition of plants is striking.  The native plant community at the Station fire site is now at exponentially increased risk for invasion from non-native plants. Hopefully, indigenous communities in California will work with local, state, and federal agencies to restore the Station fire area to promote native ecologies and potential for foraging traditional food plants.

Literature Cited

Bocquet-Appel, J-P. 2011. When the world’s population took off: The springboard of the Neolithic demographic transition. Science 333, 560-561.

Carrera-Bastos et al. 2011. The western diet and lifestyle and diseases of civilization. Researc Reports in Clinical Cardiology. 2:15-35

Center for Disease Control : Traditional Foods Project. 2014. Diabetes Public Health Resource. <Accessed 11/12/2014 http://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/projects/ndwp/traditional-foods.htm>

Childe G. 1936. Man Makes Himself. Oxford University Press. Oxford, England.

Cordain et al., Origins and evolution of the Western diet: health implications for the 21st century. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 81, 341-354 (2005).

Cordain et al., Plant-animal subsistence ratios and macronutrient energy estimations in worldwide hunter-gatherer diets. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 71, 682-692 (2000).

Indian Health Service. Regional differences in Indian health. Rockville, MD: US Department of Health and Human Services, 1996.

Buffer the Vampire Slayer

Tables

ArcGIS Online Map

For this exercise, I sat around contemplating an idea I could accomplish with my limited GIS skills. I began by thinking of a nuclear fallout map I saw a few years ago. I’m from a relatively strange family, and both my biological brothers, as well as both of my brother-in-laws are preppers. They all have stockpiles of food and weapons, and for the quite a bit about SHTF, and TEOTWAWKI (I’ll let you figure those acronyms out yourself).  We are all in geographically different areas, but within Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho, that way, we have several potential areas for long term survival if the need arises. Okay, enough background, on to the actual project. I wanted to map the areas in the PNW that we safe areas for any number of calamities. I wanted to add several datasets, but unfortunately, the online version limited me to 1000 data points per file, which wouldn’t work.  So I zoomed into Spokane, figuring I would do a similar idea, but just based on the safest place to live in Spokane, as that stuff gets important when you are a dad and berated by your brothers for not being prepared enough.

I started by looking at the obvious stuff, I checked areas that could potentially flood (this seemed to be more important while I was living in FL), and checked areas for potential earthquakes. Northern Idaho had a slightly higher rating than the greater Spokane area, but all areas of Spokane seemed similar.  I then added a layer for wildfires, mostly because it was cool, but again helped me narrow down some areas of Spokane as potentially unsafe due to wildfire (mostly border areas).  I then added a layer about hazardous waste sites. No one wants to live near hazardous waste, and it could be sites for potential terrorist activities (I’m sounding like my brothers at this point).  The sites narrowed down my search even further, the valley was out, and so was the eastside of North Spokane.

I then checked alcoholic beverage spending. I have no idea if this correlates in any meaningful way, but I was under the assumption that drunken people may commit more crimes, I didn’t put too much stock in this layer, but was somewhat curious. I then really wanted to add crime data, but again, 1000 point maximum, so I actually used the City of Spokane GIS site to get a map, and again it seemed as based on this and other criteria NW Spokane seemed to be the safest area.  (I used a super scientific algorithm to determine this).  I then wanted to look at a few other criteria, mainly financial. Mainly the unemployment rate, under the premise that areas with less unemployment will have less crime (this seemed relatively true). I then looked at average household income under the same premise, as well as disposable income.  Interestingly enough, the area I live in seems to meet or exceed in all the criteria I looked at, so I am going to show this to my brothers and let them know how intuitive I am. 

I enjoyed this exercise, as I got a feel how easy it could be to produce maps with layers and criteria with real world implications. I’m excited to get more proficient with GIS so I can produce relatively usable maps with my particular interests. That and I might need to decide where to put a bunker one day. 

Census

I obviously don't know how to change the output into landscape. That being said, the overall project was quiet enjoyable. I'm starting to learn the ins and outs of ArcGIS, so using it to make such interesting maps is borderline magical. I've been inspired by this class to get a GIS certificate, which will increase my proficiency level. This series of maps explains the difference in the total number of people by county in the 10 year span between 1990 and 2000. The next map is the overall population by county in 2000, followed by the percent change by county, and the population density by county. The world is growing exponentially, and we are still incredibly luckily to have the resources available that we do in this country. That is going to change, and this series of maps speaks volumes to that fact. 

About 11,000 years ago, the world had roughly 6 million people. Today we have breached 7 billion people. I would enjoying doing a projection similar to this set of models, but by extrapolating into 30 or 50 years in the future (I'm sure this has been done). Also, if someone could tell me how to put my landscape file into a horizontal format, that would be wonderful. 

DTM

I chose a map on the area I just spent the weekend hunting in. In general the area is the Sherman Creek Wildlife Area, the bridge at Kettle Falls, and the surrounding areas. This area is considered the beginning of the Okanagan Highlands, and is mostly Ponderosa Pine forest with mixed conifers at higher elevations. The drainages generally are dominated by quaking aspen with a thick understory. Turkey, cougar, bear, and deer are hunted in this area. The geographical coordinate system is Datum of North America 1983, and the extent information is as follows: Top 49.00167^o, Left119.00167^o, Right 117.9983^o, and Bottom 47.9983^o.