PPPM 657 Research Methods Equity Analysis Resources

As with Land Use and Zoning Plans, recent planning and zoning maps are usually published electronically and can be found by searching the county or city government's, or regional planning agency's website. 

Older print planning and zoning maps may be found in UO Knight Library's extensive map collection.  While much of the map collection is not listed in LibrarySearch, we have been working on getting all the Oregon maps in the catalog.  To start searching the catalog, I recommend you use the advanced search and begin your search by using the county or city you are interested in and the word "maps" as appearing in the subject and the word zoning anywhere to find zoning documents.  Likewise, the phrases "land use," "landuse," "planning" or "plan*) will help find land use and planning maps.

As the arrangement of the collection is complex and not everything is cataloged, do not hesitate to Contact the Map Collection for assistance in locating items. Additionally, items in the collection "Map Rare (ask at Document Center)" are in a locked location.  Contact the Map Collection to have us retrieve the maps and get scanned copies or set up an appointment to view the print maps.

There are many online sites where you can view the current flood hazard maps.

• FEMA Flood Map Service Center is the official public source of flood hazard information produced in support of the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). Use the MSC to find your official flood map, access a range of other flood hazard products, and take advantage of tools for better understanding flood risk.
• FEMA’s National Flood Hazard Layer (NFHL) Viewer is an easy to use interactive map that shows current flood hazard areas.
• PolicyMap is an online interactive database that the UO Libraries subscribe to. One of the over 5000 indicators (demographics, housing, income, etc.)that can be mapped are the FEMA flood hazard maps.

The UO Libraries has some older editions of flood hazard maps in it's collection. These are often organized by county. However, many of these older sets will not appear in LibrarySearch.  You can browse for them in the print map collection by call number.  For example, older FEMA Flood Hazard maps for Lane County will have the call number G4293.L4 C32 and are located in the folded map collection.

The UO Libraries has an extensive aerial photography collection of Oregon that contains photographs going back to the 1930s.  These photographs are often used to establish the history of a site and determine likely environmental hazards that might be present. The Beyond Toxics Environmental Justice Research Repository includes some images of Eugene, OR that show lumber mills and logging ponds in areas where there are now houses (and groundwater contamination) and trace the evolution of the train yards in west Eugene.