Li Junran, Jia Zhimin, Kandakji Tarek, Wang Guan, Xiao Huijie
Department of Geography, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China.
Department of Earth Sciences, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
Sci Total Environ. 2024 Jan 10;907:167946. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.167946. Epub 2023 Oct 20.
Since the mid-2000s, drilling and production of oil and gas activities have grown exponentially in the southwestern United States. The clearing of pre-existing vegetation and topsoil to build well pads is known to have a broad range of ecological, biological, hydrological, and health impacts, therefore ecosystem restoration of the well pads is generally required. This process, however, is often complicated by limited funding, various governing bodies and ownership, and frequent extreme weather events. To ensure that well pad construction does not result in damaging, irreversible environmental change in the region, a prioritization strategy is needed to maximize the effectiveness of restoration efforts. The objective of this study is to develop a methodology to prioritize well pads where ecosystem restoration is urgently needed. In this methodology, a set of locational soil (e.g., soil fragility, wind and water erodibility) and land cover (e.g., land cover, proximity to streams) attributes were derived from publicly available datasets and a restoration priority score system along with a weighting factor were assigned to individual attributes. Accordingly, a total restoration priority score (TRPS) was calculated for individual well pads. This methodology was applied to a dataset of >10,000 well pads located in the Permian Basin and the surrounding area. This method effectively filtered out a large number of sites with low TRPS, and identified a small portion of high-score, clustered well pads. The identification of such well pads makes the logistical challenge of targeted restoration much easier for stakeholders tasked with maximizing the effectiveness of restoration efforts with limited funding. Despite some known limitations and inaccuracies, this method is low-cost and can be easily adaptable to humid and sub-humid systems, and even to restoration relevant to non-oil and gas exploration activities, such as solar and wind development, in the southwestern United States and many other areas worldwide.
自21世纪中叶以来，美国西南部的石油和天然气钻探及生产活动呈指数级增长。众所周知，为建造井场而清除原有植被和表土会对生态、生物、水文和健康产生广泛影响，因此通常需要对井场进行生态系统恢复。然而，这一过程常常因资金有限、管理机构和所有权多样以及极端天气事件频发而变得复杂。为确保井场建设不会导致该地区出现破坏性的、不可逆转的环境变化，需要一种优先排序策略来最大限度地提高恢复工作的成效。本研究的目的是开发一种方法，对急需进行生态系统恢复的井场进行优先排序。在这种方法中，从公开可用的数据集中获取了一组位置土壤属性（如土壤脆弱性、风蚀和水蚀性）和土地覆盖属性（如土地覆盖、与溪流的距离），并为各个属性分配了恢复优先得分系统和权重因子。据此，计算出了各个井场的总恢复优先得分（TRPS）。该方法应用于二叠纪盆地及周边地区的一万多个井场数据集。此方法有效地筛选出了大量TRPS较低的场地，并识别出了一小部分高分、集中分布的井场。识别出这些井场后，对于那些负责在资金有限的情况下最大限度提高恢复成效的利益相关者来说，有针对性恢复的后勤挑战就容易得多了。尽管存在一些已知的局限性和不准确性，但该方法成本低廉，并且能够轻松适用于湿润和亚湿润系统，甚至适用于与美国西南部及世界许多其他地区的非石油和天然气勘探活动（如太阳能和风能开发）相关的恢复工作。
