Outdoor Equity: Visualizing Visitor Use Patterns at California Campsites to Explore Equitable Access
This organization contains the code and documentation used in a capstone project for the Masters of Environmental Data Science Program at the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
This project focused on access to outdoor recreation. It has been well-documented that access to nature positively impacts mental and physical well-being. Federal public land management agencies in the United States offer a variety of outdoor recreation activities to visitors. However, people from different socioeconomic and identity groups access federal public lands unequally due to historical discrimination and current inequities. This project uses data from the Recreation Information Database (RIDB) and the United States Census Bureau (US Census) to explore patterns of visitor use of reservable overnight sites (such as campgrounds, cabins, hike-in, and more). Specifically, 2018 reservation data and US Census data from the next available year to 2018 (i.e. 2018 median income data, 2015 language data) was used. The final product created was the interactive Outdoor Equity App that gives users tools to summarize data, explore relationships between RIDB and US Census variables, view maps of where visitors are coming from for reservable sites in California, and download subset data.
This organization contains the following repositories:
The capstone project was presented on May 25th, 2022 to a live audience and livesteamed on YouTube. The project was submitted to faculty advisors and clients on June 3rd, 2022. The creators are still interested in the project and may work on it beyond their Master of Environmental Data Science Program, so please reach out with suggestions or questions by contacting them directly. You can find their contact information at their personal webpages linked below.