Community Food Mapping: Spatial Food Security

A map is only as clear as its legend. Students collaborate to design intuitive visual symbols:

Red Salmon Icon = Setnet & subsistence fishing sites along Cook Inlet beaches.

Blue Berry Icon = High-yield blueberry, cranberry, and salmonberry gathering bogs.

Green Sprout Icon = High-tunnel greenhouses and school raised beds.

Yellow Snowflake Icon = Cold storage lockers and community freezers.

Step 1: Spread out a large aerial satellite photo of the Tyonek townsite and surrounding coastline.

Step 2: Fasten clear mylar acetate sheets over the satellite base map.

Step 3: Using colored permanent markers, plot known food assets based on personal experience and interviews with parents and elders.

Step 4: Draw pedestrian walking pathways, showing how far elders must walk to reach fresh food.

When students overlay a seasonal calendar onto their spatial map, patterns emerge:

Summer is abundant: fresh salmon, berries, and greenhouse crops everywhere. But what happens in late winter when rivers freeze and greenhouse production halts?

Mapping highlights the critical need for year-round storage infrastructure: commercial freeze-dryers, root cellars, and winter hydroponic facilities.

Students formulate concrete project proposals based on their map analysis:

'We need a heated community root cellar near the clinic to store 5,000 pounds of winter potatoes.'

'We need a second smokehouse on the north beach to expand summer processing capacity for young families.'

Students present their completed community food maps to elders and village council members.

The collaborative map serves as a living document to guide future agricultural grant investments and youth education.