A study of urban forest and greenspace inequality in Mississauga and Brampton using remote sensing and NDVI

<h4 dir="ltr">This study aims to analyse the relationship between urban forests and greenspaces, and income levels. It aims to evaluate how trees and greenspaces are distributed amongst the census tracts in Brampton and Mississauga, Ontario. This study utilizes the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (derived from Sentinel-2 imagery) to distinguish vegetation and non-vegetated land covers. A supervised classification system was used, and three information classes were created: non-vegetation, vegetation cover, and water. Then two choropleth maps were created for each municipality to show the median household income across census tracts. These were divided into four ranges: ≤$60,000, $60,000 to $80,000, $80,000 to $100,000, and >$100,000. Then three census tracts with the lowest income were compared to the three census tracts with the highest income in each municipality. The results showed that high-income areas had more vegetation cover compared to low-income census tracts in both Brampton and Mississauga. The census tracts in the >$100,000 range had an average vegetation cover of 38.2% in Mississauga, and 22.7% in Brampton. The census tracts in ≤$60,000 range had an average vegetation cover of 22.7% in Mississauga and 17.9% in Brampton. In Mississauga, the three census tracts with the highest incomes had percentage vegetation cover ranging from 65.3% to 76.2%, whereas vegetation cover in low-income census tracts ranged from 15% to 30.5%. In Brampton, the highest-income CTs had a vegetation cover of 28.4% to 38.5%, whereas the lowest-income CTs had a vegetation cover of 9.2% to 29.7%.</h4><p></p>