Missing the Forest for the Trees: Balancing Shale Exploration and Conservation Goals through Policy

Abstract

Unconventional shale gas activity has presented both challenges and opportunities for conservation. The unique nature of horizontal drilling used in shale exploration allows for a reduction in the footprint of shale-related activity in the landscape. However, existing policies regulating shale activity across the Northeast, particularly in Pennsylvania, largely miss an opportunity to encourage such consolidation, which would result in substantial ecosystem conservation. Using satellite land cover data for the years 2006 and 2011 combined with data on shale drilling activity in Pennsylvania, we show that a consolidation of wells to underutilized well pads would have resulted in a forest conservation gain of over 112,838 acres between 2006 and 2015. While likely an overestimate, this suggests that small changes in policy such as moving toward a quantity-based market mechanism to regulate the number of well pads would result in substantial conservation gains.

Systematically Incorporating Environmental Objectives into Shale Gas Pipeline Development: A Binary Integer, Multiobjective Spatial Optimization Model

“…Our results contribute to growing research showing that state regulations and policies have not led to efficient land use and that energy development could occur with fewer environmental impacts at relatively low cost. − Klaiber, Gopalakrishnan, and Hasan used satellite land cover data to find that policies encouraging consolidation on well pads in Pennsylvania would have conserved almost 113000 acres over a nine-year period. Abrahams, Griffin, and Matthews find that requiring pipelines to follow existing roads in forested areas would prevent additional fragmentation at a cost of $0.005 to $0.02 per Mcf of natural gas.…”

Site Characteristics Associated with Conventional and Unconventional Petroleum Development in West Virginia

“…Fragmentation potentially impacts ecological and hydrological processes and thus affects such outcomes as pollution, wildlife movement, and distribution of invasive species (Riitters et al, 2002). Natural gas development has the potential to disrupt natural contiguous areas with various land breaks, so it is important to determine where and to what extent forest fragmentation is occurring (Klaiber et al, 2016). UC shale-gas development has been shown as a process that can impact forest fragmentation (Abrahams et al, 2015).…”

Anthropogenic activities contribute to changes in forest cover in the shale oil and gas region of Northeastern British Columbia

“…Similar to the principle of landscape ecology, Racicot et al (2014) assert that comparatively, a pipeline network would have a more significant footprint on the land cover as compared to the impacts from access roads. However, it has been theorized that the clearance of forest to construct well pads leads to loss of forest cover as well as altering the spatial pattern of the forest patches (Klaiber et al, 2017;Soeder et al, 2014cited in Abrahams et al, 2015. Previous studies have projected that the land change from oil and gas development would be more than a double of the impacts from residential and urban development in the near future (Trainor et al, 2016).…”

“…Therefore, studies are likely to underestimate pipelines and access roads due to how data on these features are obtained (Langlois et al, 2017;Klaiber et al, 2017.…”

“…In the United States and Canada, the focus of the biophysical studies has been on water quality (Lutz, Lewis & Doyle, 2013;Rahm et al, 2013;Vidic et al, 2013). A few of the biophysical studies have focused on forest change (see example in Grushecky & Wang, 2012;Abrahams et al, 2015;Racicot et al, 2014;Klaiber et al, 2017;Donnelly et al, 2017) with most of these studies taking place in the United States. In the Province of British Columbia, the focus of the biophysical studies has been on baseline water quality (Rivard et al, 2014).…”