Quantifying the Effects of Energy Infrastructure on Bird Populations and Biodiversity

Shale oil and gas production and wind energy generation both expanded rapidly across the United States between 2000 and 2020, raising concerns over impacts on wildlife. I combine longitudinal microdata from the National Audubon Society's Christmas Bird Count with geolocated registries of all wind turbines and shale wells constructed in the contiguous U.S. during this period to estimate the causal effects of these contrasting types of energy infrastructure on bird populations and biodiversity, which are key bellwethers of ecosystem health. Results show that the onset of shale oil and gas production reduces subsequent bird population counts by 15%, even after adjusting for location and year fixed effects, weather, counting effort, and land-use changes. Wind turbines do not have any measurable impact on bird counts. Negative effects of shale are larger when wells are drilled within important bird habitats.

A Consideration of Wildlife in the Benefit-Costs of Hydraulic Fracturing: Expanding to an E3 Analysis

High-volume hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) for natural gas in the Marcellus Shale (underlying about 24 mil ha in New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, Ohio, and Virginia) has become a politically charged issue, primarily because of concerns about drinking water safety and human health. This paper examines fracking in the Marcellus region, and the tradeoffs between the energy and economic potential of natural gas extraction and the environmental impacts on wildlife. Therefore, we introduce a new E3 analysis that combines the costs and benefits as regards energy, economics, and the environment. The Marcellus Shale has the most proven reserves of natural gas of any basin in the United States, at 129 trillion cubic feet. Income from natural gas development comes primarily from direct and indirect jobs, and induced jobs (those created when direct workers spend their earnings in a community), taxes and fees, and royalty and lease payments to rights holders. Fracking, however, has detrimental effects on wildlife and wildlife habitats. Terrestrial habitat effects are primarily due to landscape fragmentation from the clearing of land for pipeline and well pad development, which often removes mature forest and creates open corridors and edge habitats. An increase in forest edge and open corridors is associated with shifts in the bird community, as generalist species that do well around people increase in abundance, while forest specialists decline. Invasive plants associated with disturbance further degrade forest habitats. Aquatic habitats are also affected, both directly and indirectly. Hydraulic fracturing requires up to 20 mil L of water per well fracture, most of which comes from surface water sources in the Marcellus region. The removal of water, especially in smaller headwaters, can increase sedimentation, alter water temperature and change its chemistry, resulting in reductions in aquatic biodiversity. Given the reality that hydraulic fracturing will continue, there is a need to develop practices that best minimize negative impacts on terrestrial and aquatic habitats, as well as policies and the resolve to enforce these practices. To achieve a more sustainable balance between economic, energy, and environmental costs and benefits, we recommend that industry, scientists, non-governmental organizations, mineral rights holders, landowners, and regulators work together to develop a set of best management practices that represent the best knowledge available.

Habitat management for stopover and breeding songbird communities along rights-of-way in forest-dominated landscapes

The proliferation of energy rights-of-way (pipelines and powerlines; ROWs) in the central Appalachian region has prompted wildlife management agencies to consider ways to use these features to manage and conserve at-risk songbird species. However, little empirical evidence exists regarding best management strategies to enhance habitat surrounding ROWs for the songbird community during stopover or breeding periods. We used a before-after-control-impact design to study cut-back border (linear tree cuttings along abrupt forest edges) harvest width (15, 30, and 45 m wide into the forest), and harvest intensity (14 and 4.5 m² /ha basal area retention) prescriptions along ROWs and assessed their effects on mature forest and young forest songbird species and avian guilds (forest gap habitat, forest interior habitat, young forest habitat, and species of regional conservation priority) up to 2 years after treatment throughout West Virginia. Species richness during the spring stopover period initially decreased at the 1-year post-treatment period but returned to pre-treatment levels by 2 years post-treatment. Breeding season responses to cut-back border treatments varied across harvest width, harvest intensity, and time, but all responses of focal species abundance and guild richness were neutral or positive. Cut-back border harvest intensity had a stronger influence (i.e., more positive responses) than harvest width on breeding focal species abundances and guild richness. For harvest intensity, the more intense, 4.5 m² /ha retention treatment had a stronger influence (i.e., more positive responses) than the less intense, 14 m² /ha retention treatment. For harvest width, the narrowest treatment (15-m wide) had the strongest influence (i.e., more positive responses) of all width treatments, followed by the widest (45-m wide treatment) with the least influence from the 30-m wide treatment. Abundances and richness increased from pre-treatment to 2 years post-treatment across all species and guilds that exhibited a response. These results suggest that cut-back borders increase breeding season habitat suitability along ROWs for the mature forest and young forest songbird community as well as for species of regional conservation priority in the short-term. These findings can aid the development of management guidelines for the forest songbird community along abrupt forest edges of man-made habitat features in forest-dominated landscapes.

Remote Sensing of Forest Structural Changes Due to the Recent Boom of Unconventional Shale Gas Extraction Activities in Appalachian Ohio

Dense unconventional shale gas extraction activities have occurred in Appalachian Ohio since 2010 and they have caused various landcover changes and forest fragmentation issues. This research investigated the most recent boom of unconventional shale gas extraction activities and their impacts on the landcover changes and forest structural changes in the Muskingum River Watershed in Appalachian Ohio. Triple-temporal high-resolution natural-color aerial images from 2006 to 2017 and a group of ancillary geographic information system (GIS) data were first used to digitize the landcover changes due to the recent boom of these unconventional shale gas extraction activities. Geographic object-based image analysis (GEOBIA) was then employed to form forest patches as image objects and to accurately quantify the forest connectivity. Lastly, the initial and updated forest image objects were used to quantify the loss of core forest as the two-dimensional (2D) forest structural changes, and initial and updated canopy height models (CHMs) derived from airborne light detection and ranging (LiDAR) point clouds were used to quantify the loss of forest volume as three-dimensional (3D) forest structural changes. The results indicate a consistent format but uneven spatiotemporal development of these unconventional shale gas extraction activities. Dense unconventional shale gas extraction activities formed two apparent hotspots. Two-thirds of the well pad facilities and half of the pipeline right-of-way (ROW) corridors were constructed during the raising phase of the boom. At the end of the boom, significant forest fragmentation already occurred in both hotspots of these active unconventional shale gas extraction activities, and the areal loss of core forest reached up to 14.60% in the densest concentrated regions of these activities. These results call for attention to the ecological studies targeted on the forest fragmentation in the Muskingum River Watershed and the broader Appalachian Ohio regions.

Quantifying habitat loss and modification from recent expansion of energy infrastructure in an isolated, peripheral greater sage-grouse population

New technologies and increasing energy demand have contributed to rapid expansion of unconventional oil and gas development in the U.S. in the past two decades. Quantifying the effects of energy infrastructure on land cover and wildlife habitat is essential for informing land-use policy, developing wildlife conservation strategies, and projecting impacts of future development. The greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus; GrSG) is a species of concern in sagebrush ecosystems of the western U.S. and Canada and the focus of widespread conservation and management efforts. Increasing energy development within GrSG range has prompted the need to quantify and predict impacts of energy infrastructure on their habitat and populations. We mapped the annual distribution, surface type, and activity level of energy and non-energy infrastructure in the Parachute-Piceance-Roan (PPR), a small, peripheral greater sage-grouse population in Colorado with expanding oil and gas development, from 2005 to 2015. During that time, the footprint of energy infrastructure more than doubled to 3,275 ha (+108.6%), including 195 new well pads, 930 ha of new pipelines, and 230 km of new roads. In contrast, non-energy infrastructure decreased to 532 ha (-8.3%). The majority of energy infrastructure present each year (77-84%) was supporting infrastructure (i.e. facilities, roads, pipelines) rather than well pads, with an average of 2.24 ± 0.52 SE ha of supporting infrastructure per ha of well pad. Pipelines comprised 74-80% of reclaimed surface and roads comprised 54-69% of disturbed surface across years. By 2015, anthropogenic infrastructure covered 2.70% of occupied range and 2.93% of GrSG habitat, and energy infrastructure covered 2.50% and 10.79% of two priority habitat management area zones in the PPR. Three land cover classes most affected by energy infrastructure were also those strongly selected by GrSG. Topographic constraints appear to concentrate energy infrastructure in areas with gentler topography that also have the highest GrSG use. Together, these patterns suggest that future energy development will cause substantial additional loss and modification of GrSG habitat in the PPR. Our findings are valuable for assessing surface disturbance caps for land-use management and projections of energy infrastructure effects on wildlife habitat in this and other expanding oil and gas fields.

Unconventional oil and gas spills: Materials, volumes, and risks to surface waters in four states of the U.S

Extraction of oil and gas from unconventional sources, such as shale, has dramatically increased over the past ten years, raising the potential for spills or releases of chemicals, waste materials, and oil and gas. We analyzed spill data associated with unconventional wells from Colorado, New Mexico, North Dakota and Pennsylvania from 2005 to 2014, where we defined unconventional wells as horizontally drilled into an unconventional formation. We identified materials spilled by state and for each material we summarized frequency, volumes and spill rates. We evaluated the environmental risk of spills by calculating distance to the nearest stream and compared these distances to existing setback regulations. Finally, we summarized relative importance to drinking water in watersheds where spills occurred. Across all four states, we identified 21,300 unconventional wells and 6622 reported spills. The number of horizontal well bores increased sharply beginning in the late 2000s; spill rates also increased for all states except PA where the rate initially increased, reached a maximum in 2009 and then decreased. Wastewater, crude oil, drilling waste, and hydraulic fracturing fluid were the materials most often spilled; spilled volumes of these materials largely ranged from 100 to 10,000L. Across all states, the average distance of spills to a stream was highest in New Mexico (1379m), followed by Colorado (747m), North Dakota (598m) and then Pennsylvania (268m), and 7.0, 13.3, and 20.4% of spills occurred within existing surface water setback regulations of 30.5, 61.0, and 91.4m, respectively. Pennsylvania spills occurred in watersheds with a higher relative importance to drinking water than the other three states. Results from this study can inform risk assessments by providing improved input parameters on volume and rates of materials spilled, and guide regulations and the management policy of spills.