Soil access is an equity issue for urban climate resilience

• Nature-based solutions (NBS) help build resilience to climate change . • Soil is needed to implement NBS, but soil availability is uneven across LA County. • Sites with higher social vulnerability have less soil area. • Sites with less soil area have more fragmented and irregularly shaped soil patches. • Access to soil is an important equity issue that may limit opportunities for NBS. Nature-based solutions (NBS) are increasingly used to build urban climate resilience by employing natural features and processes. Implementing NBS in urban residential areas relies on the availability of unsealed soil surfaces. Here we investigate how soil is distributed at fine spatial scales across Los Angeles County, the second largest metropolitan area in the United States, to examine the potential for NBS to be realized equitably. We delineate soil patches in residential areas across a range of socioeconomic settings and urban forms, and then compare soil patch metrics to social vulnerability. Results demonstrate that areas with higher social vulnerability have less total soil area that is also more fragmented and more irregularly shaped. Reduced soil area and soil fragmentation may limit the potential for implementing NBS. As soil availability varies across Los Angeles County in relation to social vulnerability, this study foregrounds soil access as an urban equity issue.