On October 14, 2015,
the U.S. Geological Survey released a study
entitled “Avoidance of unconventional oil wells and roads exacerbates habitat
loss for grassland birds in the North American great plains” published in the
Elsevier Journal. The study examines the population-level impacts of oil and
gas development on grassland birds in northwestern North Dakota from 2012 to
2014.
The researchers measured
bird density in areas with extensive oil and gas development and related
infrastructures. Based on singing bird
surveys, they observed that grassland birds avoided habitat within 150 m of
roadways, 267 m of single-bore well edges, and 150 m of multi-bore well edges.
The researchers noted,
however, that noise from oil and gas infrastructure does not affect species in
the same way, pointing out that “[v]arying tolerance of anthropogenic noise is
suggested as a factor driving variation in avian avoidance of natural gas
wells, but oil wells in [the study area] were considerably less noisy and thus
noise is less likely to be a key driver in this system.”
The researchers
concluded that placing multi-bore well pads instead of single-bore well pads
along bird migration corridors “may be a viable method to minimize the
footprint of oil development.”
Written by Chloe Marie - Research Fellow
10/19/2015
No comments:
Post a Comment