Project Title: Food Deserts in Arkansas
Food deserts are areas where residents have limited access to affordable and nutritious food, particularly fresh fruits and vegetables. In Arkansas, a largely rural state with significant pockets of poverty, food deserts present a major public health concern. Many communities—especially in low-income, minority, or rural areas—lack nearby grocery stores, farmers markets, or healthy food providers. This limited access contributes to poor nutrition, diet-related illnesses, and health disparities.
This project was created to identify and visually present the locations of food deserts across Arkansas using geospatial technology. By mapping these areas, the project aims to:
Raise awareness among the public, policymakers, and organizations.
Provide data that can guide policy decisions and resource allocation.
Support community efforts to address food insecurity and promote equitable access to healthy food.
To achieve this, the project utilizes ArcGIS Story Map, a powerful tool that combines interactive maps with narrative text, images, audio, and multimedia content.
This combination of storytelling and spatial analysis helps communicate the scope and impact of food deserts in a compelling, accessible way.
C – Critical Thinking
The project required analyzing complex issues such as poverty, geography, transportation, and food access. You had to:
Investigate what defines a food desert.
Evaluate data sources (like USDA data and census demographics).
Interpret spatial relationships between communities and food access.
Make informed decisions about what to include in the Story Map to effectively communicate the issue.
A – Advanced Technology
You used ArcGIS Story Map, a professional-grade geospatial technology platform. This tool allowed you to:
Create interactive maps using layers and data sets.
Incorporate multimedia elements to enhance user understanding.
Visualize geographic and demographic trends that would be hard to understand through text alone.
This demonstrates strong technical skills in GIS mapping and digital storytelling.
R – Real-World Problem Solving
Food deserts are a real and pressing issue in Arkansas. Your project:
Addresses a genuine community need—highlighting areas with limited food access.
Offers valuable insights that could be used by nonprofits, local governments, and health organizations.
Raises awareness and provides a tool that could help drive solutions like food drives, mobile markets, or policy change.
T – Teamwork
If you collaborated with classmates or stakeholders, you likely demonstrated teamwork by:
Delegating tasks such as data collection, map design, and narrative writing.
Sharing ideas and providing feedback throughout the project.
Working with our community partner Mr Marcus Davis of the Pine Bluff Generator for input being he is resident of Pine Bluff. Also allowing our mapping team working after school at the Pine Bluff Generator to complete parts of their assignments.
Even if you work mostly independently, the project aligns with EAST's teamwork value by showing how your work can support broader community efforts.
What makes this project unique is its powerful combination of geospatial technology and real-world impact—using ArcGIS Story Map to visually expose and explain the issue of food deserts in Arkansas. It turns complex data into an interactive, easy-to-understand story that can raise awareness, influence decision-makers, and drive community action—something that plain statistics or reports alone can't do.
The project was started in the Fall of 2024 and completed in the Spring Semester of 2025. Two students worked on this project one collected the data and information and the other students created the Interactive Map.