A Tale of Two Regions: Landscape Ecological Planning for Shale Gas Energy Futures

Abstract:

As we increasingly embrace deep shale gas deposits to meet global energy demands new and dispersed local and regional policy and planning challenges emerge. Even in regions with long histories of energy extraction, such as coal, shale gas and the infrastructure needed to produce the gas and transport it to market offers uniquely complex transformations in land use and landcover not previously experienced. These transformations are fast paced, dispersed and can overwhelm local and regional planning and regulatory processes. Coupled to these transformations is a structural confounding factor. While extraction and testing are carried out locally, regulation and decision-making is multilayered, often influenced by national and international factors.

Using a geodesign framework, this paper applies a set of geospatial landscape ecological planning tools in two shale gas settings. First, we describe and detail a series of ongoing studies and tools that we have developed for communities in the Marcellus Shale region of the eastern United States, specifically the northern tier of Pennsylvania. Second, we apply a subset of these tools to potential gas development areas of the Fylde region in Lancashire, United Kingdom.

For the past five years we have tested, applied and refined a set of place based and data driven geospatial models for forecasting, envisioning, analyzing and evaluating shale gas activities in northern Pennsylvania. These models are continuously compared to important landscape ecological planning challenges and priorities in the region, e.g. visual and cultural resource preservation. Adapting and applying these tools to a different landscape allow us to not only isolate and define important regulatory and policy exigencies in each specific setting, but also to develop and refine these models for broader application. As we continue to explore increasingly complex energy solutions globally, we need an equally complex comparative set of landscape ecological planning tools to inform policy, design and regional planning. Adapting tools and techniques developed in Pennsylvania where shale gas extraction is ongoing to Lancashire, where industry is still in the exploratory phase offers a key opportunity to test and refine more generalizable models.