EPA Monitor and USA Cities GIS Application


An Ode to my MA

Introduction

The EPA monitors numerous pollutants throughout the US. This map is meant to depict the spatial distribution of the EPA's monitoring locations as well as basic US city and state information. I created this to visualize the distribution of monitors for a certain time period before conducting an analysis for an AOI.
It might take a second or two for the layers to load as they are requested directly from GEE. Click a state to zoom to it. Select a set of points with the tool on the left. The tool will summarize the points and NTL layer via OpenAI's API. For now, the date slider is for the EPA monitor layer only. Daily updates are being made for streamlined data access and symbology.

Sources and Metadata

The leaflet map is comprised of 4 main layers: US Cities with a population greater than 100k, US States and incooperated territories, EPA monitors, and night time lights. More cities are being added, with the current ones being added from the wikipedia page due to simplicity. Additional data can be found on the US Census Bureu website here. US States boundaries were downloaded for 2025 from the US Census Buraeu. I added basic descriptions of each state from their respective Wiki page. The EPA monitor layer is a live return from the Air Quality System (AQS) API. The NTL layer represents the average DNB radiance values from the VIIRS Nighttime Day/Night Annual Band Composites V2.2 collection. It is served via Google Earth Engine.

Data and API Docs

Working Updates

Blog Updates
Add more base GEE layers
Change points to be more discernable
Include monitor and satillite information (T.O.A.R)