The California Environmental Protection Agency has released a statewide list of census tracts most burdened by pollution. Many of the worst pollution pockets identified are in the San Joaquin Valley, Los Angeles County and the Inland Empire.

The screening tool, called CalEnviroScreen, was developed by the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, a branch of Cal/EPA, to pinpoint the communities with the highest exposure and vulnerability to multiple environmental hazards, including polluted air and water, waste facilities and contaminated soil.  The rankings, however, are not based only on measures of environmental exposure. They also take into account socioeconomic characteristics and health data on residents to assess the overall vulnerability of communities. Those factors include poverty, education, unemployment, rates of asthma and low-birth-weight infants.

You can read more about it in this LA Times article.

As a side note, I find the CalEPA app a little slow in Internet Explorer.  Google Chrome was a little faster.  They are using ArcGIS Online technology for their mapping.  If you do a search for “calenviroscreen” on ArcGIS.com, you will see a listing of their maps and apps for versions 1.1 and 2.0.

Just released, the latest edition of the nation’s most comprehensive look at land-surface conditions from coast to coast shows the extent of land cover types from forests to urban areas. The National Land Cover Database (NLCD 2011) is made available to the public by the U.S. Geological Survey and partners.

Dividing the lower 48 states into 9 billion geographic cells, the massive database provides consistent information about land conditions at regional to nationwide scales. Collected in repeated five-year cycles, NLCD data is used by resource managers and decision-makers to conduct ecosystem studies, determine spatial patterns of biodiversity, trace indications of climate change, and develop best practices in land management. Click below to check it out.