Mapping Concentrated Animal Feed Operations (CAFO) and Cancer using Spatial Join in ArcGIS Pro 3.3

A spatial join is a geographic information system (GIS) operation that merges two spatial layers' attribute tables based on a spatial relationship between their geometries. It's similar to a table join in a relational database, but instead of a common key value, the key is location. In this case, we will be counting the number of points within a set of polygons. While running the spatial join operation, we can also aggregate various statistics based on the fields of the join features (number of points we are counting by polygon).

In the first example, we counted the number of cancer deaths by county in the state of North Carolina. Cancer deaths are represented as points. While we are doing that, we are also averaging the age of each decedent. That was we can get statistics based on the number of cancer deaths by county, a rate of cancer deaths as well as the average age of each decedent by county.

This analysis was run using ArcGIS Pro, Version 3.3. You will notice the Spatial Join functionality in ArcGIS Pro 3.3 does not create a new resulting feature class from the spatial join that previous versions of ArcGIS Pro did do, but rather appends the existing target feature class (county or watershed) based on the results of the spatial join and any field calculations/aggregations.

These videos have been created in support of teaching and research in the field of GIS (Geographic Information Systems) for the Department of Environmental, Earth and Geospatial Sciences at North Carolina Central University (NCCU). Established in 1910, NCCU is located in Durham, North Carolina, and serves about 8,500 students. The mission of our department is to promote intellectual, professional, and personal excellence through the highest quality instruction, research, and service in the environmental, earth and geospatial sciences. Its vision is to be recognized as a regional, statewide, and national resource for students and society as well as professionals who work in the many fields that are encompassed by the environmental, earth, and geospatial sciences. Students in our programs currently focus their studies in the fields of seismology, natural hazards, GIS (Geographic Information Systems) and Remote Sensing applications, environmental health & impacts and remediation technology among others. Our courses are designed to provide students with the analytical and methodological skills necessary to understand or derive explanations for individual occurrences, for recurring processes, and for invariable as well as statistical regularities in the earth’s lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere. The department prides itself in former students who fostered these skills and have gone onto successful careers in the field at places such as the North Carolina Department of Transportation, City of Durham, Environmental Protection Agency, Lowe’s Corporation, Environmental Protection Agency, National Forest Service, Army Corps of Engineers, real estate firms and private contractors or students who have gone onto Ph.D. programs at places such as North Carolina State University, North Carolina A&T State University and the University of North Carolina, Greensboro.