What happens when youth are given the power to tackle environmental challenges in their own communities? This session highlights trubel&co’s leadership in youth-centered data civics through our Mapping Justice initiative, our flagship data civics program that equips underserved high school students with geospatial and data storytelling skills to advance environmental and climate justice. Building from our work in Hawai‘i and adapting its model for the Gulf Coast, this session highlights how community-based mapping can bridge divides between science, data, and civic life.

In the Gulf region, rising seas, land loss, and inequitable exposure to heat and flooding threaten both ecosystems and livelihoods. Through Mapping Justice, students use GIS to investigate climate vulnerability, access to green space, and the distribution of environmental burdens. Through hands-on data collection, visualization, and storytelling, participants connect local knowledge to public datasets, generating place-based insights that inform both community advocacy and regional climate resilience planning.

The session will center student stories, highlighting how youth-led spatial analysis deepens understanding of coastal change and resilience science. Participants will engage with case examples of student-generated maps and dashboards that reveal environmental risk patterns, highlight socio-environmental inequities, and propose data-driven interventions.

Session objectives include:

Demonstrate how participatory mapping and youth engagement can strengthen ecosystem and human community resilience across the Gulf.

Share strategies for integrating community-grounded data into regional climate adaptation and science education initiatives.

Attendees will leave with practical tools and frameworks for connecting technical data to community-based stories and decision-making.