FracTracker: A GeoWeb tool to guide informed decision-making and policies surrounding natural gas extraction

Natural gas drilling in shale formations across the United States has increased significantly over the last few years due to improved drilling technologies that allow the industry to drill horizontally and hydraulically fracture shale layers to release the trapped gases. However, the influx of this industry generates the potential for a select number of mineral rights owners to accumulate wealth, cause societal confusion and fear, trigger real and perceived environmental and public health threats, and contribute to under-regulated industrial processes. Recognizing these risks, the Center for Healthy Environments and Communities of the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health and several collaborators launched a tool that allows people to share up-to-date, natural gas drilling data online. Referred to as ‘FracTracker,' this GeoWeb platform can store, communicate, aggregate, and map shale gas data across states. FracTracker.org also includes a social media component in the form of an interactive blog, whereby data, maps, and personal experiences are translated into stories. CHEC is piloting FracTracker in Northeastern U.S., where natural gas drilling is booming in the Marcellus Shale field. Launched in June 2010, FracTracker has already begun to shape the landscape of natural gas information and informed decision-making by providing citizens and policy-makers the ability to ‘see' the big picture; this system has identified the pattern of drilling prevalence in poverty-stricken, rural areas, and has demonstrated the limited carrying capacity of PA surface waters to handle the disposal of the drilling waste fluids, for example. As the intensity of shale gas extraction increases, FracTracker can be used to communicate future concerns, as well as compare data and identify spatial patterns to better understand the complexity of this industry's social, ethical, economic, land use, political, environmental, and public health issues.