About Vernal.earth

Vernal.earth is a county-level environmental exposure atlas covering all 3,221 US counties, paired with an AI-powered research assistant for testing whether environmental conditions predict health and wildlife disease outcomes.

Methodology

The platform combines data from federal agencies (USGS, EPA, CDC, Census, NASA, NOAA) into a unified database with a correlation engine, regression analysis, and spatial queries. All analyses include statistical rigor indicators: sample sizes, p-values, effect sizes, and Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons.

Research Philosophy

  • Case studies over national averages. Each disease outbreak gets its own local investigation.
  • Multicausal. Same disease can have different environmental causes in different locations.
  • Null findings are findings. Report what doesn't correlate alongside what does.
  • Reproducibility is non-negotiable. Every result includes data, method, and code for independent verification.
  • Wildlife first. Wildlife has no socioeconomic confounders. Environmental signals are cleaner.

What This Is Not

Vernal does not prove that environmental contamination causes disease. County-level ecological studies identify geographic associations and generate hypotheses. Proving causation requires individual-level epidemiology, controlled experiments, or mechanistic validation at the molecular level.

What Vernal does is make hypothesis generation fast, reproducible, and grounded in real federal data — reducing the time from "I wonder if..." to "here's the statistical association, here's the mechanism, here's what to test next" from months to hours.

Data Sources

USGS National Geochemical Survey EPA Toxics Release Inventory CDC PLACES & WONDER Census ACS 2022 NASA POWER NOAA nClimDiv EIA Form 860 County Health Rankings USGS MRDS (mines) USGS USWTDB (turbines) EPA ECHO USGS PAD-US

Built With

PostgreSQL + PostGIS, FastAPI, SvelteKit, Claude API. One person, AI tools, federal data, and a Mac Mini. April 2026.