The Neighborhoods at Risk tool is one of the mapping tools featured by New York Sea Grant in its EJ Mapping Tools Guide. It displays demographic information alongside climate indicators, e.g., families in poverty and area lacking tree canopy.

Contact:

Jessica A. Kuonen, Hudson Estuary Resilience Specialist, NYSG E: jak546@cornell.edu, P: (845) 340-3990 x323

New York Sea Grant is raising awareness of publicly-available mapping tools that help visualize environmental disparities and can aid in more equitable community planning efforts.

Kingston, NY, August 10, 2022 - Historically underserved and underrepresented communities in New York often suffer disproportionate impacts from weather events and climate change. To support more equitable outcomes in planning and decision-making, New York Sea Grant (NYSG) released an Environmental Justice Mapping Tools Guide in 2020 to help communities investigate and define their context through the lens of environmental justice (EJ). Feedback received during an introductory webinar identified a need to provide more training on individual tools.

In 2021, NYSG hosted a fall webinar series that featured presentations, demonstrations, and Q&A with the creators of the EJ mapping tools. The three tools selected for attention came from agency, private, and academic sources. Representatives from EPA Region 2 gave an overview of EJ and the EJSCREEN tool. Headwaters Economics gave an overview of how climate indicators can inform community planning using the Neighborhoods at Risk tool. Researchers from Columbia University presented an overview of social vulnerability and how it’s used in the Hudson River Flood Impact Decision Support System which displays regional sea level rise projections alongside other useful data. All the webinars in the series provided an opportunity for attendees to ask questions and were recorded and posted to the NYSG YouTube page for expanded public availability.

These EJ-focused webinars drew from 64 to 82 participants representing community-based organizations, state agencies, nonprofits and advocacy groups, county and local government, academia, and education. They learned how to access demographic, environmental hazard, and climate indicators data using the EJ mapping tools, and appreciated the opportunity to ask questions. Feedback received suggests that a gap in this kind of education currently exists and is a high priority for many stakeholders. NYSG will be conducting additional outreach to alert community leaders to this valuable set of tools in 2022.

A Fall 2021 Environmental Justice (EJ)-theme webinar series hosted by New York Sea Grant provided participants with a deeper dive into three EJ mapping tools. Access to demographic, environmental hazard, and climate indicator data helps inform more equitable community planning efforts.


More Info: New York Sea Grant

New York Sea Grant (NYSG), a cooperative program of Cornell University and the State University of New York (SUNY), is one of 34 university-based programs under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Sea Grant College Program.

Since 1971, NYSG has represented a statewide network of integrated research, education and extension services promoting coastal community economic vitality, environmental sustainability and citizen awareness and understanding about the State’s marine and Great Lakes resources.

Through NYSG’s efforts, the combined talents of university scientists and extension specialists help develop and transfer science-based information to many coastal user groups—businesses and industries, federal, state and local government decision-makers and agency managers, educators, the media and the interested public.

The program maintains Great Lakes offices at Cornell University, SUNY Buffalo, SUNY Oswego and the Wayne County Cooperative Extension office in Newark. In the State's marine waters, NYSG has offices at Stony Brook University in Long Island, Brooklyn College and Cornell Cooperative Extension in NYC and Kingston in the Hudson Valley.

For updates on Sea Grant activities: www.nyseagrant.org has RSS, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube links. NYSG offers a free e-list sign up via www.nyseagrant.org/nycoastlines for its flagship publication, NY Coastlines/Currents, which is published quarterly.