The environmental impact of shale energy development is a growing concern in the US and worldwide. Although the topic is well-studied in general, shale development’s impact on drylands has received much less attention in the literature. This study focuses on the effect of shale development on land cover in the Permian Basin region—a unique arid/semi-arid landscape experiencing an unprecedented intensity of drilling and production activities. By taking advantage of the high-resolution remote sensing land cover data, we develop a fixed-effects panel (longitudinal) data regression model to control unobserved spatial heterogeneities and regionwide trends. The model allows us to understand the land cover’s dynamics over the past decade of shale development. The results show that shale development had moderate negative but statistically significant impacts on shrubland and grassland/pasture. The effect is more strongly associated with the hydrocarbon production volume and less with the number of oil and gas wells drilled. Between shrubland and grassland/pasture, the impact on shrubland is more pronounced in terms of magnitude. The dominance of shrubland in the region likely explains the result.

中文翻译：

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页岩油气开发对二叠纪盆地地区牧场的影响：基于高分辨率遥感数据的评估

页岩能源开发对环境的影响在美国和世界范围内日益引起关注。尽管总体上对该主题进行了深入研究，但页岩发育对旱地的影响在文献中受到的关注较少。这项研究的重点是页岩发育对二叠纪盆地地区土地覆被的影响-一种独特的干旱/半干旱景观，经历了前所未有的钻探和生产活动。通过利用高分辨率遥感土地覆盖数据，我们开发了固定效果面板（纵向）数据回归模型，以控制未观察到的空间异质性和整个区域的趋势。该模型使我们能够了解过去十年页岩开发中土地覆盖的动态。结果表明，页岩发育对灌木丛和草地/草场有中等程度的负面影响，但在统计学上具有显着影响。这种影响与碳氢化合物的产量有更强的联系，而与钻探的石油和天然气井的数量联系较少。在灌木丛和草地/草场之间，对灌木丛的影响在数量上更为明显。该地区灌木丛的优势可能解释了结果。