Spotlight On: The Shale Network Project

Can natural gas extraction through hydraulic fracturing (also known as "fracking") and clean water coexist? This question has been subject of debate between concerned environmentalists and those who see this fracking as a promising step toward a transition away from other energy sources such as coal. Although natural gas is viewed by many as a positive alternative to coal because of costs as well as environmental impacts, questions regarding the environmental impacts of fracking still exist.

According to the EIA, natural gas generated electricity has grown dramatically over the past  two decades while production of coal and petroleum generated electricity has decreased.

One of the most active research projects currently utilizing HIS, the Shale Network, is investigating the impacts of natural gas extraction by generating knowledge about water quality and flow data in a place that has been characterized as one of the most promising sources of natural gas in the U.S., the Marcellus Shale region. The Shale Network is composed of researchers from Penn State, Pitt, Dickinson, in addition to representatives from other universities and organizations. Funded by the National Science Foundation, this project is building and maintaining a database that will, according to this NSF article, "be used to establish background concentrations of chemicals in streams and rivers, and ultimately to assess changes throughout the Marcellus Shale area."

This database, which is an aggregation of data sets from different organizations, is hosted by CUAHSI.

Data collected from Shale Network sites can be accessed in HydroDesktop

And, like other sources of data registered in HIS, data from the Shale Network project are publicly available and can be discovered using HIS clients.

Click here for more information about the Shale Network.