nav[aria-label="Primary Navigation"] { padding: 0; & ul { list-style: none; width: 100%; display: flex; flex-direction: row; justify-content: start; align-items: start; gap: 30px; padding: 0; & li { margin: 0; } & ul li { list-style: none; } } }

Plotting Data to Census Tracts

JSprouls

I work at a small, grassroots non-profit and I am trying to make some data-driven tree planting decisions for Nashville, TN. I am trying to identify food deserts to pilot some edible food forestry projects, and wanted to take advantage of the data from the USDA Food Access Research Atlas

In the data download page it says all of data included is aggregated into an Excel spreadsheet for easy download and includes:

Note for GIS users: The Atlas is based on 2010 census tract polygons. To use the underlying Atlas data in a GIS, the data from this spreadsheet needs to be joined to a census tract boundary file. With ESRI software, users should have access to the tract layer on ESRI's "Data and Maps" data distribution.

When I open the attribute table for the atlas data, the field CensusTract is a 10-digit code, whereas the census tract layer (downloaded from US Census Bureau Cartographic Boundary Files website ) has a GEOID for census tract that is 11-digits long (based on my research, that is how census tracts are designated ubiquitously).

Does anyone have any suggestions how to use this dataset, or am I missing something obvious?

PS: There is a previous post that asks a similar question a decade ago, but the answer isn't helpful to me.

Find more posts tagged with

Data and services

Mapping

Accepted answers

All comments

HazelKwak

Hello,
I am having a similar issue over here in SE Washington state... I need to map out 2023 Life Expectancy by Zip Codes for our Community Health Assessment. I am using 2020 Census Tract data (includes the GEOIDs and Zip Codes, does not include the 11-digit tract numbers).

But my csv with my Life Expectancy rates and zip codes will not join correctly with the Tract data. I'd like to use graduated colors in symbology to differentiate the zip codes areas by Life Expectancy rates. Symbology does not recognize the Rates column as quantitative and then I end up with only one class when I need 4 classes. A few things I have tried results it Symbology wanting to recognize the zip codes instead of the rates.

I did not realize how complicated working with Census data can be! But I'm not giving up!

jcarlson

CSVs and other spreadsheets don't have field types, they just get interpreted by the program that loads them. If they see numbers, they assign a type of "number", and leading zerods get dropped.

JSprouls

Also: the Tract info in the CSV is 'double' whereas the Tract ID is 'text' in the shapefile.

JSprouls

You're right - and I cleaned the data in USDA Food Access Research Atlas spreadsheet and kept only the features with the Tracts I need to work with.

Now when I perform the Add Join, the feature runs and returns null values in each field from the CSV. Any idea what may be causing this? The data in the input join field isn't indexed, if that matters...

The only other ideas I have is that the Census Tracts from the USDA Food Access Research Atlas CSV are from 2010 and I am trying to join to more recent data - does that matter?

marksm_macomb

I just took a really quick look at the data, and it looks like the tract ID is different lengths depending on the state! I think if you look at only Tennessee, you will find that the IDs in both the excel table and the tract polygon table will be 11 digits.

When I opened a tract polygon layer from Esri, the first record is a tract in Texas, with an 11 digit ID, but when I opened the table from USDA, the first record is from Alabama with a 10 digit ID. So based on first glace they might not seem to match. I would go ahead and try the join anyways to see what happens 🙂

jcarlson

Sounds like a victim of Excel stripping the leading zero from a field. The datasets line up over here, if you assume there should be a "0" in front of the rest of the GEOID.

Over here, I am using LibreOffice Calc and QGIS, admittedly, but I can load the spreadsheet and boundary features and join them without issue.

Join the Conversation

Signed in members can post, follow updates, and more. New here? Register a free account.

Quick Links

Community Help
Find useful guides, FAQs, and documents to help you navigate and make the most of Esri Community.