Go to the Locator
The Food Desert Locator has been replaced by the Food Access Research Atlas, a mapping tool that allows users to investigate multiple indictors of food store access. This new tool expands upon the Food Desert Locator by updating previous estimates of food desert census tracts, incorporating alternative estimates of low-income and low-access census tracts, and offering contextual information for all census tracts in the United States.
In the Atlas, updated estimates of food-desert census tracts—low-income census tracts where a substantial number or share of people are far from supermarkets—that use more recent population and store location data can be viewed and mapped. New additional measures of low-income and low-access census tracts are also estimated and mapped. Two of these new measures use alternative distance markers for assessing how far residents of the census tract are from the nearest supermarket. A third measure directly considers household vehicle availability, since access to a vehicle is an important factor for food access. In addition to these measures of low-income and low-access census tracts, contextual information such as the share of people living in group quarters in the census tract and whether the tract is a low-income tract, can also be mapped. Each of these indicators is available for all census tracts in the United States, including tracts in Alaska and Hawaii.