Week 8 LAB

The first map in this post represents census data from 2000 showing the density of the Black population throughout the nation.  The darker green areas represent a higher black population in those particular counties, which are clustered around the South and Southern-Eastern coastline of the United States. The darkest green counties clustered across the southern areas of the nation can have as high as an 86% Black population density.

The second map shows the density of Asian populations in the continental United States.  The darkest blue areas representing the greatest density of Asian population are clustered in the coastal California regions of the Bay area and Los Angeles areas with some further clustering in the New England territories of the United States with some counties retaining between a 25-42% Asian population.

The final map in this post documents the population density of some other race across the United States.  The darkest orange areas in the mid-western states of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas contain numerous counties with the highest density of this particular population. As much as 42% of the population in these dark orange counties are made up of this other race.

Taken together, these three population maps provide an interesting picture of the continental United States as related by racial population density.  The areas with the highest population density of any given racial group (represented by the darkest counties in these maps) have very little overlap.  With the exception of the high Asian and other race populations in California, all three high density clusters in these maps are located in three different areas around the nation.  For the Black population, this area is the Southern U.S. For the Asian population, this area is coastal California and the Northern East coast. Lastly, for the other race population, the high density populations are largely clustered in the mid-western part of the United States.

The use of GIS in the creation of these maps makes analysis of population density across the nation easier.  The process of creating these GIS, particularly the combining of Excel data onto the ArcGIS program, proved difficult. However, the end results shed light on just how beneficial GIS can be when analyzing different areas or trends.