Capstone

California has nearly 1,100 miles of shoreline, and a documented 512 relevant access points to this resource, but the state’s communities are facing a loss of coastal access due to increasing populations and decreasing coastal areas impacted by sea level rise and coastal armoring structures. The public's right of access to the shoreline is preserved in the state constitution, and in 1979 the California Coastal Act guaranteed public access to the coastline for all residents.  Since then, however, the population demographics and distribution in the state have changed significantly. A GIS analysis is done using ESRI ArcGIS Pro (v2.4) with input datasets being California coastal access points from the California Coastal Commission (CCC) and the U.S. Census Bureau demographic data (2010), at the resolution of block groups. The Feature Analysis tool ‘Summarize Nearby’ provides feature tables containing summary statistics of population demographics served by each point. Population served is defined in this study as residents counted in the 2010 census within a specified drive-time of the access point. Output tables are organized by 15-minute, and 30-minute drive-times for summer and winter seasons and include relevant summary statistics. Analysis of California coastal access points and the population within a defined proximity of the points is relevant for use in coastal zone management, informing coastal policy at the local and statewide scale, and identifying underserved populations and ways to aid in providing equal access.

Explore 2010 U.S. Census Demographics with this 3D ESRI web app.  

Population Density (purple), Per Capita Income (green), and Total Population (beige to blue) are visualized using Web Scenes.