Project Overview
Despite documented environmental injustices in U.S. prisons, this area remains understudied. Prisons are EJ communities by definition—overrepresented by people of color, indigenous persons, and low-income individuals who cannot escape environmental health threats. This groundbreaking research initiative was funded by NASA's $100,000 Equity and Environmental Justice Grant to address this critical gap.
Key Project Objectives
- •Quantify environmental conditions at all 1,865 state and federal prisons in the U.S.
- •Calculate a standardized vulnerability index for each prison
- •Create an open-access geospatial dataset and reproducible code base
This research leverages NASA's Earth science data—including satellite, land cover, climate, and air quality datasets—to characterize environmental harms faced by incarcerated people across all U.S. state and federal prisons. The method incorporates 11 environmental indicators grouped into three components: climate risk (heat index, canopy cover, wildfire risk and flood hazard), environmental exposures (ozone, PM 2.5, pesticide use, and traffic density), and environmental effects (proximity to superfund sites, risk management plan facilities and hazardous waste sites).
Explore the interactive map below to visualize how these environmental factors impact prisons across the United States.
Environmental Risk Indicators
Climate Risk Indicators
Heat Index
ActiveExtreme temperature conditions creating dangerous indoor environments
Canopy Cover
Natural cooling provided by tree coverage around facilities
Wildfire Risk
Proximity to wildfire-prone areas affecting air quality
Flood Hazard
Flood risk considering limited mobility during emergencies
Heat Index
Map Loading Error
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Map Instructions
- Select a tab to view indicators for that category
- Click any indicator to view it on the map
- Toggle between All Prisons and Top 10 highest risk
- Hover over facilities for detailed information
- Zoom and pan to explore specific regions
Heat Index
Extreme temperature conditions creating dangerous indoor environments
Data Source Description
The MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) daily land surface temperature dataset (MYD11A1, version 061) provides thermal infrared measurements of Earth's surface temperature captured by NASA's Aqua satellite. This dataset offers global coverage with daily temporal resolution, making it suitable for long-term temperature trend analysis.
Processing & Methodology
Mean daily land surface temperature (LST) values were calculated for summer months (June through August) spanning a 10-year period from 2012 to 2022, with values averaged within prison boundary polygons.
Project Team & My Contribution
Research Team
Dr. Caitlin Mothes
Principal Investigator, Research and Program Coordinator
Geospatial Centroid, Colorado State University
Dan Carver
Geospatial Technical Manager
Geospatial Centroid, Colorado State University
Dr. Carrie Chennault
Assistant Professor of Geography
Prison Agriculture Lab, Colorado State University
My Role & Contributions
As a Geospatial Analyst and Programmer at the Geospatial Centroid, I worked closely with Caitlin Mothes to develop R-spatial scripts for data processing and analysis.
Project Impact & Recognition
The main deliverables of our project are 1) an open-access geospatial dataset with calculated values for each environmental indicator and a final environmental vulnerability index for 1,865 U.S. prisons and 2) an open-access, reproducible code base for every step of our analysis to promote the application of these assessments to other institutions and make our data and methods transparent.
This research has provided critical data for activists, researchers, policy makers, and government agencies to understand and address environmental injustices in the prison system. The work represents a significant contribution to both environmental justice and geospatial science.
"This project taught me about managing a repository and working with large data, and using multiple datasets to contribute to environmental justice research that highlights the intersection of incarceration and environmental harm."
— Devin Hunt, Project Contributor
Special thanks to the Geospatial Centroid at Colorado State University and NASA's Equity and Environmental Justice Grant program for making this critical research possible.