Introducing the Interactive North State Hidden Disparities Map

California’s North State is known for its beautiful, rugged land and resilient population. Those who live here know that there are also both visible and invisible challenges that impact health, well-being, and the economy. To help people understand these issues better, we are pleased to share the Hidden Disparities Map, which is hosted on the UC Davis Institute of the Environment’s website. UC Davis (UCD) has been a partner to Sierra Institute in the North State Jobs First initiative since 2024. In creating this map, researchers from the UCD Environmental and Climate Justice Hub and the UCD DataLab teamed up to turn key questions and ideas into this visual tool to help address real-world problems. This map supports viewing multiple layers of social and environmental conditions at the same time in order to uncover patterns and consider new solutions.

The interactive online map brings to light some problems that are often overlooked in the ten-county North State region of California, which includes Butte, Glenn, Lassen, Modoc, Plumas, Shasta, Sierra, Siskiyou, Tehama, and Trinity counties per the California Jobs First initiative. The information (data) used to make this map comes from publicly available sources such as the US Census Bureau and other state and federal agencies. The map’s webpage provides text with details about where each of the data layers came from along with links to more resources.

What You Can See

This map uses data to show lesser-known information about who lives in these areas, along with “disparities”. Disparities are differences in access to resources or conditions that residents face which make life harder. You can turn on one, two, or more information layers at the same time, including:

Boundaries: It can be helpful and interesting to look at specific areas by drawing lines around them. Use the checkboxes in the map to turn on or off the outlines of counties, regions, and Tribal lands/waters.

Social and Environmental Concerns: Turn on or off combinations of layers –with or without the boundary lines– to explore areas of concern and consider solutions.

These layers include:

• High poverty areas
• Types of heating fuel sources that people use
• Primary care provider shortages for different groups of people
• Public transit lines
• Fire risks
• Mercury-impacted waterways
• Superfund sites
• Brownfields (lands that have been developed and polluted and then abandoned)
• Abandoned mines

Examples From The Map

Looking at two or more items at the same time by overlapping them can reveal “hidden disparities.” For example, looking at primary care shortage areas along with transit lines turned on can show how people in certain areas may have an even harder time getting to a doctor if they rely on public transportation. Similarly, with fire risk along with transit turned on together, one can visualize what an emergency evacuation might be like for community members who don’t have a car. Another example is comparing high poverty areas along with mercury impacted waterways: people living or recreating there may eat more food from contaminated areas. Adding in the primary care shortage layer along with both the poverty and mercury can point to certain populations and areas where there is a heightened public health risk.

• What other layers or topics would you be curious to see in the map?
• What do you notice when you overlay two or more layers?
• What questions does the layering make you wonder about?

Real-World Action

This interactive map is more than just a picture. It is a tool for planning, organizing, and increasing representation of North State issues and constituents. The map can also be used as a tool for understanding and responding to “environmental justice” issues, that can affect quality of life but are often not well understood.

Environmental justice involves exposure to environmental benefits and harms, coupled with the ability to participate in environmental planning and decision making. Environmental injustice is when harms affect quality of life and residents do not have the ability to participate in decisions about those harms (and benefits). Other tools that visualize environmental justice and injustice in California may not fully or accurately address the needs of the rural North State. This happens in part because of how spatial calculations are sometimes made about areas that are remote and sparsely populated, and because of choices to focus on other issues besides ones that are most prevalent here.

California planners and local governments are required by law to include environmental justice in their “general plans” (which are the blueprints for guiding a city or county’s evolution, be that development and/or protection). All of the 13 California Jobs First economic regions have been working on regional plans. Our region’s process highlighted a vision of a “thriving and resilient North State … based on a regenerative economy that produces climate-adaptive forests and watersheds, healthy and financially secure communities, and growing and innovative community scale businesses linked to regional markets.”

Planners and residents can use this Hidden Disparities map to identify communities and issues that need attention.The map can help planners and others move beyond simply following the law toward taking concrete actions that address real needs. This is one way the map can help people understand the uniqueness of the North State and experiences of environmental injustices as the social, environmental, and spatial data demonstrate.