The Shale Network

1. Welcome! The Shale Network The ShaleNetwork will create a central and accessible repository for geochemistry and hydrology data collected by watershed groups, government agencies, industry stakeholders, and universities working together to document natural variability and potential environmental impacts of shale gas extraction activities.

2. Incidents that have happened here in Pennsylvania and the northeast have created public push-back worldwide

3. Our Hypothesis An online, shared compilation of water quality and quantity data collected by citizen scientists, government agencies, industry, and university personnel in areas of shale gas production will pull people together and provide the understanding needed to make good decisions.

4. The Shale Network Team Susan L. Brantley, Kathy Brasier, Dave Yoxtheimer, Jennifer Williams, Paul Grieve, Anne Danahy, Debbie Lambert, Tracy Bernier, Colleen Unroe (Penn State) CandieWilderman, Julie Vastine(Dickinson College, ALLARM) Jorge Abad, RadisavVidic, Cesar Simon, Sina Armand, Yue Han (Pitt University) Rick Hooper, Jon Pollak(CUAHSI) May 13 2014 Many thanks to Kirk Jalbert who has become an integral advisor and particpant

5. Many participants have contributed ideas, help, time, and data Photo from the annual Shale Network workshop April 2012 above and May 2013 below

6. Conclusions from 2012 Workshop (41 people) • 1) Extensive data have been collected for areas of shale gas development, but data are hard to access • 2) We need to encourage government and industry to publish data online • 3) We can use database to assess data gaps and needs • 4) We need to prioritize which data to find and upload • 5) The database should be maintained even beyond the three years of NSF funding for Shale Network • 6) The development of the database will help to forge agreements among data providers to standardize or simplify metadata requirements • 7) An interface is needed – other than HydroDesktop -- that allows non-scientists to interact with the data

7. Conclusions from 2013 Workshop (65 attendees) • 1) Data from the gas industry near drilling sites – especially pre-drill data -- should be publicly available and the Shale Network workshop should encourage participation by industry personnel • 2) Data can be released to Shale Network for publication online with “fuzzy” locations so that confidentiality is not abrogated • 3) In some sub-areas, the number of shale gas wells outnumbers the number of monitoring sites: the density of sites that are needed for adequate monitoring must be assessed • 4) Data from universities, volunteer groups and other organizaitons should be synthesized • 5) Data gatherers (especially volunteers) want to learn more about how the data are used • 6) Other data could be usefully collected into online databases (biota, access roads and pipeline locations, air quality, social parameters, photographic data) • 7) The Shale Network initiative is particularly useful for fostering coordination among state agencies and volunteer groups • 8) Volunteers have a “sense of place” that could be important in detecting problems that are slow to develop or detect • 9) The tool, HydroDesktop, should return more of the metadata in the database

8. Teen Shale Network: working to educate Teen Shale Network includes high school students from State College High School PA (Current advisor, Eugene Ruoccio) and Mountain Ridge High School WV (Teacher Tom Kozikowski) and the Pittsburgh area (organized through J. Abad and R. Vidic)

9. Steering Committee for this Workshop • Carl Kirby, Bucknell University • Susan Brantley, Penn State • John Smelko, Marcellus Shale Coalition • Julie Vastine, ALLARM, Dickinson College • Mark Stephens, PA DEP Thank you

10. Survey results: what participants want from this meeting • > 50% of attendees are new to the workshop and Shale Network • You are most interested in building networks, learning about data availability/access/analysis, monitoring activities, shale gas activity/knowledge/research • Participants include citizens who are monitoring, training/managing volunteers and monitoring networks as well as researchers or practioners working on shale gas • Future directions and issues that surveyed participants are interested in: coordination of monitoring networks, issues around data collection, data quality, use of the data for research, communicating with the public about findings from the research, targeted monitoring, groundwater issues

11. Goals of this Workshop: Understanding water quality impacts from shale gas development • For multiple groups to explain their efforts to understand water issues related to shale gas development • To share what we all have learned from our efforts • To explore what is needed for the future to understand potential impacts of hydraulic fracturing on water quality and quantity in regions of shale gas development in the northeast

12. www.ShaleNetwork.org (our website) • The website (www.shalenetwork.org), originally providing less than 5000 data downloads per month in 2011, reached 20,000 downloads per month in spring 2013. • As of May 2013, the Shale Network database had 58,133 time series, 22,904 sites, 669,774 data values, and 121 water quality analytes. • As of May 2014, the database has 25,054 sites, 1,031,802 data values (observations) • Data has been received from government entities, private companies, academics, nonprofits, and 11 volunteer groups

13. Shale Network Publications • Brantley, S. L., et al. (2012). "Workshop discusses database for Marcellus water issues." EOS, Transactions of the American Geophysical Union93(34): 328. • Vidic, R. D., et al. (2013). "Impact of shale gas development on regional water quality." Science340: 826, DOI:810.1126/science.1235009. • Brantley, S. L., et al. (2013). "Project asks what's in the water after fracking at depth." EOS, Transactions of the American Geophysical Union95(45): 409-411. • Brantley, S. L., et al. (2014). "Water resource impacts during unconventional shale gas development: The Pennsylvania experience." International Journal of Coal Geology126: 140-156, dx.doi.org/110.1016/j.coal.2013.1012.1017. (available at desk)