Project 5: Community Forestry Grant Program

Identifying low-income, low tree canopy communities that qualify for forestry grant program
Mercedes Stroeve | University of Southern California | SSCI 586 – Fall 2022

For my final project in SSCI 586 GIS Programming and Customization, I've developed a
geospatial package using Python to perform data cleaning and reformatting, and Model Builder
in ArcGIS Pro to conduct geoprocessing analysis. This geospatial package is intended to be used
as a scripting tool by others to identify available lots for tree planting and urban forestation in
low-income neighborhoods. I framed my process around the criteria provided in the CAL FIRE’s
Urban and Community Forestry Grant Program (California Department of Forestry and Fire
Protection, 2021). The goal of the program is to provide funding to projects in low-income
communities in California that also lack greenspace. This funding can be used toward the
“purchase of vacant, undeveloped, or underutilized neighborhoods” that will become a local
greenspace.

Study Area
The study area is Los Angeles, California.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau
American Community Survey (ACS), the
Median Income for the city is $65,290 with
an average of 2.77 people per household
(United States Census Bureau, 2021). Of the
estimated 3,849,297 people living in the city,
approximately 16.9% of the population live
in poverty. Low-income neighborhoods in
Los Angeles are known for having low
amounts of tree canopy. This is significant
because tree canopy helps improve the
surrounding air quality from the high
concentration of traffic and industrial
pollutants as well as providing needed shade
to combat the warm temperatures.

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Data and Data Processing

Name File/Data Type Projection Source

Median Income CSV n/a https://data.census.gov/cedsci/table?g=0500

ACS ST5Y 2020 000US06037%241400000&tid=ACSDP5Y2
020.DP05

Vacant Lots CSV n/a https://www.tophap.com/map

Census Tracts 2020 SHP / Polygon WGS 1984 https://geohub.lacity.org/datasets/lacounty::c

ensus-tracts-2020/about

City Boundary SHP / Polygon WGS 1984 https://geohub.lacity.org/datasets/lahub::city

-boundary/about

Trees (Bureau of Street SHP / Point WGS 1984 https://geohub.lacity.org/datasets/lahub::tree

Services) s-bureau-of-street-services/about

Method

The steps I took to conduct my geoprocessing analysis include cleaning and joining Area Median
Income (AMI) data with the census tract shapefile, clipping the shapefile to the city boundary,
spatially joining the tree data with the census to create a tree count by tract, selecting rows of
data that include 30% AMI and 50% AMI, performing a XY table to point for the vacant lots csv
file, and finally clipping the vacant lots shapefile to the selected AMI. Below I break down each
step with reference to python script.

Clean & Join Census CSV & SHP

I downloaded the csv 2020 Median Income Data for Los Angeles County and used JupyterLab
and Python Pandas package to cut the number of columns to only show census tract numbers and
their median income for families. Census tract numbers in the csv data differ from the census
tract numbers in the shapefile because it also includes the state and county number. To ensure the
match up so the tables can be joined, I needed to do a split.

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I then wanted to note which income is classified as 30%, 50%, and 80% Area Median Income.
To do so I had to remove symbols in the median income column (+, -) and convert it to integer.
Then using numpy where, I created a new column titled AMI and equaled a range of income to
different AMI percentages. The value range I gathered for each AMI came from the Los Angeles
Housing & Community Investment Department. Because the average household size is 2.77, I
settled on family size 3 (see figure below).

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In order to join the census csv data and census tract shapefile, I used geopandas to import the
shapefile and convert the data types for the census tract numbers to ensure the two tables would
join. Once I merged the tables together, I imported the updated shapefile to ArcGIS Pro Model
Builder and began my geoprocessing analysis.

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Clip
I clipped the Los Angeles County census tract shapefile to the Los Angeles city boundary.

Spatial Join
I performed a spatial join with the clipped Tree Canopy shapefile. This combined the two data
sets and provided a join count that states how many trees are completely contained in each
census tract.

Select
To create output feature classes that just have census data with 30% AMI and just 50% AMI, I
used the select tool that uses Structured Query Language (SQL) expression to find those values.

XY Table to Point
I exported a csv property list of vacant land for sale from the real estate research platform,
TopHap. To convert the csv to a shapefile I used the XY table to point geoprocessing tool.

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Clip
I clipped the list of vacant lots to both the 30% AMI selection and the 50% AMI selection to
show prime locations for urban forestation.

Share as a Geospatial Package

Finally, I shared my Model in a geospatial package through the ArcGIS website.

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https://uscssi.maps.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=670d573f5e7d4682932d2ed328e4d80b

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Results

The following maps show the distribution of

wealth as well as concentration of tree
canopy. Note that the data for tree canopy
only pertains to urban forestry, thus data for
public land such as Topanga State Park is
missing. This is intentional as the high
volume of vegetation on public land greatly
outnumbers vegetation found on urban
landscapes. The final map shows vacant lots
in 30% and 50% AMI overlayed on tree
canopy data to further assess which lots are
around the lowest concentration of tree
canopy and thus should take priority.

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Discussion
The visualizations created from the geoprocessing analysis have confirmed that census tracts
with low AMI’s tend to have a low concentration of tree canopy. As we see from the maps
neighborhoods like Wilmington and Watts have a 50% AMI with little to no tree canopy. The
maps also show census tracts around downtown Los Angeles that have minimum tree canopy
and 30% and 50% AMI. Overall, this tool has shown to be successful in identifying communities
that would benefit from programs like the CAL FIRE’s Urban and Community Forestry Grant
Program.

References

California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. “Urban and Community Forestry
Program Grant Guidelines,” 2021.
https://www.fire.ca.gov/media/ffbh0vax/cal-fire-ucf-2020-21_grant-guidelines_v_5_17_2
1.pdf.

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LAHD. “Los Angeles Housing & Community Investment Department,” 2022.
https://lahousing.lacity.org/AAHR/Documents/AMI%20Income%20and%20Rent%20Li
mits.pdf.

TopHap. “Map.” 2022. https://www.tophap.com/map.

United States Census Bureau. “U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts: Los Angeles City, California,”
2021.
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/losangelescitycalifornia,santamonicacitycali
fornia,losangelescountycalifornia/BZA010220.

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