Food Deserts?

Food deserts (not to be confused with desserts) are defined as urban neighborhoods and rural towns without access to fresh, healthy, and affordable foods. Low access to healthy foods can cause or exacerbate numerous health problems. In urban areas, the USDA states food deserts are areas at least 1-mile from a healthy affordable food source (e.g. supermarket), and they qualify as low-income communities (i.e. poverty rate of 20% or greater or 80% of median family income). In rural areas, where vehicle ownership is high, the USDA defines food deserts as 10-miles away from a healthy, affordable food source, with the same stipulations on low-income.  For the purpose of this study, I chose to look at Spokane County, a place I've called home since 2004. I should add, I've publically berated the USDA before during my thesis defense, so there is no love loss between me at the USDA recommendations. I call bullshit on the USDA's food desert idea, and attempt to make my point using a series of GIS maps below. The idea that USDA food deserts in rural areas are misleading came during a recent trip to my sisters homestead in Bonners County, ID. Although the area would be classified as a food desert, I noticed my sister and her neighbors eating MUCH healthier and fresher food than their more urban counterparts (i.e. Spokanites). Just doing a brief survey of the families who lived in the same valley as my sister, I noticed ALL of the houses had gardens (some of which were over 1/2 acre), and ALL of the families hunted (and harvested yearly).  In Spokane, I aim to systemically dissect the "food deserts" and tell you why much of the food deserts could be eliminated if we taught people to actively grow or forage for a portion of their calories.

Map of the official USDA Food deserts. 

First and foremost, let's get the egregious errors out of the way. The Air Force base is listed as a food desert. The commissary is not listed as a source of "fresh, affordable, healthy food". I think we can all agree this "food desert" isn't accurate.  

Many of the more urban food deserts have access to community gardens and farmers markets. Using these gardens and markets to recalculate from the center points of these tracts would change the food deserts. Not listed is any personal gardens, which I would argue could change the food deserts as well. Why isn't the USDA encouraging people to produce their own food or to utilize farmers markets?












Foraging is one method of producing healthy nutritious food. Many of the areas listed as deserts have access to public land  within 1 mile, where foraging is permissible. Should we be teaching people how to forage?

Just for fun - Everyone in Spokane has access to public lands within 10 miles from their home. 

Maps from WDFW - 2012 Deer / Elk Harvest. Are people in the rural food deserts really eating poor quality, expensive food? Quite a few game animals harvested in some of the "deserts" and we aren't accounting for non-reported kills, small game, waterfowl, etc. 

Lastly, I'm supposed to believe that the people who GROW our food are eating McDonalds? The "food desert" in the southeast of our county is almost exclusively agricultural land. I'm no expert, but....

A graphical representation of the dietary mineral content of a wild food, Claytonia lanceolata.

Dietary Macroelement Concentration by Sample Location

Dietary Trace Element Concentration by Sample Location

Toxic Metal Concentration by Sample Location

This series of maps, based on original research, shows the dietary mineral content of various populations of Claytonia lanceolata (Western Spring Beauty) across the Columbia Plateau Region of North America.The first map is of the macroelements, the next of trace minerals, and because we sampled in some areas with know environmental contaminants (e.g. CDA basin) the last map is heavy metal contaminants. The bars on each map show the overall content, with individual nutrients separated by color. Previously unexamined, the dietary mineral content of this historic food plant is highly variable, with no seeming trends of overall mineral content among populations. 

For additional information, please contact Paul Reilly at reillypd@Gmail.com. 

Utilizing SSURGO Data

During my thesis research, we found that the Western Spring Beauty was a highly variable source of dietary mineral nutrition. In order to hypothesize why the corms contained variable levels of nutritive content, we decided to examine potential differences in soil content. In order to do this we used the SSURGO data overlaid with sample locations (e.g. Sherman Creek, St. Paul's Mission), as well as areas we observed the plant growing, but did not sample (PersObs1 and 2), and herbarium specimen record (e.g. accession 111937 and 31473). Using the data in the SSURGO dataset, we determined spring beauty grows in many distinct types of soil. Above each type of soil is listed by MUKEY and represented as a different color. 

DEM Near Project Sample Sites

While working on my thesis, I aimed to get a better understanding about the elevation differences near sample sites. In this one example, you can see two of the sample sites we chose in relation to each other and the surrounding landscape. 

Safety in Spokane - Using only ArcGIS online resources

For this example, I wanted to map the areas in the Spokane which were potentially the safest places to live in Spokane.  That question becomes important when you are a dad and berated by your brothers for not being prepared enough.

I started by looking at the obvious stuff, I checked areas that could potentially flood (this seemed to be more important while I was living in FL), and checked areas for potential earthquakes. Northern Idaho had a slightly higher rating than the greater Spokane area, but all areas of Spokane seemed similar.  I then added a layer for wildfires, mostly because it was cool, but again helped me narrow down some areas of Spokane as potentially unsafe due to wildfire (mostly border areas).  I then added a layer about hazardous waste sites. No one wants to live near hazardous waste, and it could be sites for potential terrorist activities (I’m sounding like my brothers at this point).  The sites narrowed down my search even further, the valley was out, and so was the eastside of North Spokane.

I then checked alcoholic beverage spending. I have no idea if this correlates in any meaningful way, but I was under the assumption that drunken people may commit more crimes, I didn’t put too much stock in this layer, but was somewhat curious. I then really wanted to add crime data, but again, 1000 point maximum, so I actually used the City of Spokane GIS site to get a map, and again it seemed as based on this and other criteria NW Spokane seemed to be the safest area.  (I used a super scientific algorithm to determine this).  I then wanted to look at a few other criteria, mainly financial. Mainly the unemployment rate, under the premise that areas with less unemployment will have less crime (this seemed relatively true). I then looked at average household income under the same premise, as well as disposable income.  Interestingly enough, the area I live in seems to meet or exceed in all the criteria I looked at, so I am going to show this to my brothers and let them know how intuitive I am. That and I might need to decide where to put a bunker one day. 

Where should we put that new campground?

In order to determine an Area for a new campground in Hugo, WA, I looked for areas within 300 meters of an existing road, and within a variable buffer area for lake size. I then determined which areas were suitable, and then what areas were on private land. 

California's 2009 Station Fire and Foraging Areas

The 2009 station fire of California, the largest in Californian history, could impact the foraging capacity of California’s Indigenous Peoples. I chose to look at the fire boundaries in comparison to reservation land, overall burn length, the overall change of basal vegetation, and percent change of canopy cover.

Overall, the intensity of the burn greatly affected the vegetation composition within the boundaries of the 2009 Station fire. Although no federally recognized reservations exist with the boundary, indigenous people such as the Serrano, would have utilized the area heavily for foraging.

Fire, especially catastrophic fire, such as the Station fire, generally allow for the spread of invasive plants. In looking at the map, the overall change in composition of plants is striking.  The native plant community at the Station fire site is now at exponentially increased risk for invasion from non-native plants. Hopefully, indigenous communities in California will work with local, state, and federal agencies to restore the Station fire area to promote native ecosystems and potential for foraging traditional food plants.

The Boundaries of the burning areas was measured numerous times by the attending agencies. I used the multiple boundaries at 50% transparent to appreciate the length each area burned (less transparent=burned longer)