Conclusions

In this lab we see that the hypothesis is supported and there is a correlation between tree cover in Los Angeles City and gangland. Based on the NDVI’s findings, we see that tree cover is slightly inversely related to gang land. The higher the NDVI average for an area the higher the overall green cover. This range is based on a -1 to 1 scale, where -1 is absolutely no tree cover, such as pavement, and 1 would be completely green. An issue we run into here is that when using a satellite image that is not extremely high resolution, the individual pixels will be rough averages of all colors present on the ground, for this reason we see very little fully green or fully bare areas.

We can draw conclusions based on the data acquired, and find that gangland areas have less tree cover overall than the entire city of Los Angeles as a whole. This could be for multiple reasons. One reason may be that ganglands generally seem to appear in more urbanized areas, with a higher number of individual living in closer proximity to one another. The more urbanized an area, and the more people that inhabit a region, the more buildings, both commercial and residential we see present in an area. Parks in these areas appear to be very small and green cover much more sparse. 

A similar trend is in parks. We see amore parks occurring on average outside of gang area, but when comparing green cover of parks within gangland to parks outside of gang area we actually see that on average, gangs within gang regions are actually less green. This is an interesting trend that could be studied further. Not only are there less parks in gangland, but these parks are also less green on average than parks outside of gangland. 

We see another trend that follows this one with gang area  in relation to income levels. Lower income levels are positively associated with green cover for a specific region. We see a trend for gangland areas to occur more frequently in lower income neighborhoods. The higher average income areas appear to contain less gangland and likely less crime if we were to compare it to crime data from the city of Los Angeles. Not surprisingly, we see less parks in lower income neighborhoods. 

Overall, though the NDVI differences between areas see relatively small, this change supports the ultimate hypothesis that Gangland contains less green area than other areas, and that parks within these ganglands are actually less green than parks occurring outside of gang areas. Additionally we see income levels relate directly to amount of green cover, and gang areas occur in lower income areas on average. Though this was a fairly general attempt to recreate the study done in Baltimore, this data seems to support the findings of the Authors. A further topic for research would be to actually recreate their study based on crime rates and data specifically associated with Los Angeles.