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Natural resource managers of federal lands in the USA are often tasked with various forms of social and economic impact analysis. Federal agencies in the USA also have a mandate to analyze the potential environmental justice consequences of their activities. Relatively little is known about the environmental justice impacts of natural resource management in rural areas. Quantitative environmental justice analyses have so far heavily favored urban populations, in part owing to the difficulty of quantitative analysis of rural U.S. Census data. We developed a spatial method for integrating rural U.S. Census data with natural resource management data to address this gap. The method learns from methodological advances in overcoming the spatial limitations of Census data, but prioritizes a simple, efficient technique that is applicable not only for identifying potential environmental justice problems, but also to a potentially broad spectrum of natural resource management activities and spatial scales. We pilot test the method by analyzing the hazardous fuels reduction activities of two national forests in central Oregon, USA. We find no evidence of systematic environmental justice issues on either forest, but identify local areas that warrant additional investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Some states are defining environmental justice areas geographically on the basis of demographic criteria alone. This is problematic as it does not consider distributive concentrations of environmental toxins. Although environmental justice is much more than avoiding concentrations of increased environmental risk, the identification of such areas could provide states with a roadmap for addressing concentrations and for the facilitation of appropriate community-targeted programs in response. This research proposes an applied quantitative approach for the geographic designation of areas determined to be at greater relative risk of exposure to environmental toxins as part of states'' broader environmental justice goals and policies. Using the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency''s Risk Screening Environmental Impact Tool (RSEI) and spatial analyses, the proposed method defines geographic areas reflecting calculated risk values pertaining to exposed populations and toxic releases. The method is applied to four counties of New York, and the results are juxtaposed with current state-declared environmental justice areas, which are defined on demography alone. This approach permits geospatial mapping and exploratory spatial data analysis. The method potentially can be used by states to effectively address concentrations of toxic releases as part of their environmental justice programs and policies. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]