NYC Neighborhood Air Quality and School Bus Depots
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Provided by: Clean School Bus Coalition|Published on: January 21, 2022
Data, Graphs, and MapsScientist Reviewed
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Synopsis
- This resource from the NYC Clean School Bus Coalition consists of three interactive maps of New York City neighborhoods that display levels of air pollutants, children's asthma-related emergency room visits, bus depot locations, and demographics.
- Each map has multiple layers and base-map options to choose from, and neighborhoods can be individually selected to compare all three maps for each selected location.
Subjects: Biology, Civics, Health
Authors: Clean School Bus Coalition
Region: New York City
Languages: English
Teaching Materials
Positives
- Each of the three maps presents multiple ways of viewing the data, providing an expansive understanding of each New York City neighborhood.
- Individual maps can be selected so that classes can focus on one topic at a time.
Prerequisites
- The map legend and options are not immediately intuitive, so teachers should spend time familiarizing themselves with the options and walk students through them prior to using the maps.
- For the third map (School Bus Depots Locations in Relation to PEJA), PEJA stands for potential environmental justice area.
Differentiation & Implementation
- Advanced science classes can choose three or four neighborhoods to compare using the data from the three maps and then discuss whether or not there are patterns between air quality, number of bus depots, asthma, percentage of minority residents, and percentage of population below the poverty level.
- Less advanced science classes can select two variables to compare, such as the potential link between the number of bus depots and the number of asthma-related emergency room visits.
- Civics and government classes can look at the different political district overlay options and discuss how a group such as the Clean School Bus Coalition might work with or appeal to state senators, state assembly members, city council members, and congresspeople.
- Other resources on this topic include this Grist video about electric cars, this article by the American Lung Association about particle pollution, this article about asthma in the Bronx, and this video about environmental racism in the Borough.
This resource is a web interface that allows users to examine communities within the greater New York City metropolitan area with regard to air pollutants (O3, NO2, PM), emergency room asthma visits, and a metric quantifying poverty and minority population levels. The interface is a little clunky. For instance, the legend for each figure can be found within a pull-down icon found at the upper right of each map. Otherwise, it is a good interactive database with data sources cited in the bottom right of each map. I couldn't find a way to follow these sources, but for an interactive website, this resource is sufficient. This resource is recommended for teaching.
Teaching Tips
Standards
Resource Type and Format
Scientist Reviewed
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