Date of Award

Spring 5-1-2007

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Geography, Geology, and Anthropology

First Advisor

Jay D. Gatrell

Second Advisor

Greg Bierly

Third Advisor

Ryan R. Jensen

Abstract

Environmental justice, the study of interactions between environmental disamenities and socioeconomic conditions, has been a focus of policy debates and research since the late 1970s. To date, environmental justice research has relied heavily on a few selected metrics, including, but not limited to, Toxics Release Inventory (TRI), Treatment, Storage, and Disposal Facilities (TSDF), and Super.fund site Jocations. In this study, I will examine the efficacy of these environmental quality datasets, as well as that oflocal blood-lead level data (in children), to predict observed socioeconomic conditions and compare these results to an emerging metric, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI). Based on the performance of estimated equations in ordinary least squares (OLS) weighted by population density and geographically-weighted regression (GWR), the relative utility of these traditional environmental quality metrics and NDVI will be considered. Finally, the thesis will use local GWR r-square values to visualize the performance of the terminal model across space. This thesis concludes that with regards to the spatial distribution of disamenities, which has long been the focus of much environmental justice research and policy, the more apparent relationship lay in the interaction between class and amenities.

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