SAJE Climate Story Map

CalEnviroScreen is a screening methodology that can be used to help identify California communities that are disproportionately burdened by multiple sources of pollution. The red represents cities that have high amounts of pollution and the green means they have low amounts of pollution, and the colors orange and yellow are in the middle when it comes to the amount of pollution. We see that the highest amount of pollution comes from the downtown and the South-Central parts of Los Angeles. This is contributed to the traffic that fills these areas and the type of work done in these areas. Businesses often burn material and empty out toxic waste from heating, and air conditioning which fills the air with pollution.

This is a hot spot for pm2.5 particles.The hot spot gave me the ability to show which area in Los Angeles is affected the most from these particles. These 2.5 pm particles are thinner than hair and they can easily be inhaled through your lungs, thus causing health problems such as asthma, or lung disease. When I ran the analysis, I observed spatially that downtown and South-Central Los Angeles contains the highest amount of 2.5 particles. This is contributed to South Central and downtown LA being right in the middle of the CBD. The CBD is the central business district. Meaning it is the focal point of the city, there are many businesses that run right through the middle of the CBD and where there is business there are workers. The black lines in the map represent the freeways. We can see that the freeways meet in the CBD. The freeways can link people all over LA so that they can get to work in downtown Los Angeles. We learned these particles are caused by cars, trucks, and buses giving off pollution into the air, and when businesses burn or release waste, they are causing a high amount of the 2.5 particles. With all the traffic coming in and out of downtown daily tons of pollution fills the area and affects the people that live in Downtown and South-Central Los Angeles.

Education Attainment layer. This layer shows you the average level of school completion either high school or college. We all know the higher the education the more opportunity it is for people to make money and the lower your education the less money you make. This layer gives us a specific population that is affected by the pollution in Los Angeles. The high school degree or less on the map is blue, the college degree or higher is green. I then merged the map with the hot spot for the 2.5 pm particles so that we can see which population is more at risk for breathing the 2.5 particles. We see that majority of those with a high school degree live in that area. However, there are some neighborhoods inside the hot spot that have college degrees. However, most of the people with college degrees live further away from downtown Los Angeles because they can afford private transportation to get to work, or school. The population that is affected the most are those who have a high school education. As we all know there are not many good jobs you are able to get with a high school degree. The lack of income forces them to live in downtown or near the CBD. One reason is so that they can catch public transportation such as the bus or train. Another reason people with a high school degree live in that area is maybe because it is affordable. Los Angeles is expensive and is in a housing crisis this could be the only area they can afford to live.