Summer Research: Ally de Alcuaz uses GIS to study who is being served by Urban Agriculture in Santa Clara County
This summer, Ally de Alcuaz (Environmental Studies, Sustainable Development’16) worked on a study investigating the role of urban agriculture in Santa Clara County and its accessibility to different constituents, led by Professor Leslie Gray and postdoctoral fellow Lucy Diekmann. Ally used Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to geocode the location of various types of urban agriculture in the county, which is shown in the map below. This mapped data was integrated with extensive survey results that Professor Gray and Lucy Diekmann had previously completed. Ally was then able to determine some metrics of accessibility, such as distances traveled to urban agriculture. Ally also overlayed the urban agricultural data with data on social vulnerability in the county, developed by ESS professors Chris Bacon and Iris Stewart. This allowed her to get a clearer picture of who is being served by what type of urban agriculture. Ally is now working at Apple, together with ESS alumnae Claire Parchem and Marcos Cosineau.
Map showing community garden locations and social vulnerability in Santa Clara County.