Municipal Level Census Data Now on FT’s DataTool
Municipal level census data in Pennsylvania for the year 2010. Click the image to see a larger, dynamic snapshot.
Municipal level census data is now available to visualize or download from FracTracker’s DataTool. Categories of note include:
- 2010 US Census count
- 2000 US Census count
- Net change from 2000 to 2010
- Percent change from 2000 to 2010
Among other uses, this dataset allows for some basic explorations of how the Marcellus Shale industry affects communities throughout the Commonwealth.
Pennsylvania population and Marcellus Shale gas production by municipality. For information on a specific municipality, please zoom in and click the “i” button in the blue circle, then the map feature of your choice. Please click on the gray compass rose and double carat (^) to hide those menus.
Without doing any serious number crunching, this map shows that gas from the Marcellus Shale is being extracted in more sparsely populated areas of the state. Let’s take a closer look at Southwestern Pennsylvania.
Southwestern Pennsylvania population and Marcellus Shale gas production by municipality. For information on a specific municipality, please zoom in and click the “i” button in the blue circle, then the map feature of your choice. Please click on the gray compass rose and double carat (^) to hide those menus.
Note the ring of Marcellus Shale production around the heavily populated municipalities surrounding Pittsburgh.
We can also take a look to see whether the Marcellus Shale gas industry had any obvious effect on populations in Pennsylvania.
Population change and the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania. Please zoom in and click the “i” button in the blue circle, then the map feature of your choice. Please click on the gray compass rose and double carat (^) to hide those menus.
Areas with the most population loss are white, and those with the largest gains are black. In addition, municipalities with Marcellus Shale production in the last half of 2010 are outlined in red, while those without are outlined in blue. With a cursory look, it appears that the areas with Marcellus Shale production are actually more likely to lose population–a topic that merits further analysis.
The municipal spatial data is from PennDOT (via PASDA), while the population data is of course from the US Census Bureau.
