Mapping Census data

In this lab we learned how to incorporate US Census data into GIS. We mapped the distributions of those who marked that they were "Asian only", "Black only", and "Some other race only" throughout the continental United States.


As you can see the asians predominantly live on the west coast, in the New England area, and in a few counties in the midwest. Asians tend to live in areas that are more urban and metropolitan. This makes sense since asian have historically immigrated to those areas.


Here we see that blacks are the most populous in the South. This can be attributed to the fact that when African slaves were brought over to America, the vast majority ended up working in plantation in the South. The densest concentration of blacks center around the Mississippi river area and extends west to the Atlantic and upwards to Virginia.


The category of "Some other race only" in the 2000 US Census refers to all other responses not included in the 'White', 'Black or African American', 'American Indian and Alaska Native', 'Asian' and 'Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander' race categories. Respondants who provided write-in answers most often stated they were multi-racial or a subset of Latino people group (i.e. Mexican or Cuban). These people live predominantly in the Southwest, which is expected due to the proximity to Mexico and other Latin American countries.

This map series is very interesting as it is able to help visualize the distribution of people of different ethnicity in the continental US. The fact that different races are not distributed evenly across the county suggests that people do not live in areas randomly. There are many factors that lead to where people live, including immigration, occupational factors, and other socioeconomic factors. These factors have wide ranging implications for public health so that health interventions and research can be focused on certain areas. Survey research can also make use of GIS's ability to display demographic information so research can oversample certain race groups as appropriate. Businesses can use GIS to target their advertising, marketing, and business development according to the demographic groups they're interested in.

Thus, GIS is a very powerful tool that can help researchers to analyze spatial data that would be very difficult otherwise. I am very glad I was able to learn GIS for myself this quarter. I have worked with data outputted from GIS but I've never worked directly with GIS. There are so many possibilities for data analysis with GIS, which makes me very excited to take the intermediate class next year.

Thanks for all the help Lindsay!

- Anthony