studies on Land Use changes caused by oil and gas exploration (links)

[JohnWxy]

http://biofuelsandclimate.wordpress.com/2008/10/01/what-do-you-know-oil-does-cause-land-use-change/


Chris W. Baynard of the University of North Florida Department of Geology presented a study, http://gis.esri.com/library/userconf/serug07/papers/enviro_management/1044_venezuela_land_cover_changes.pdf#page=2">“Venezuela’s Heavy Oil Belt: Monitoring Exploration and Production-Related Land Cover Changes,”, at the ESRI 2007 Southeast User Group Conference.

In it he says that most land use land cover change studies on deforestation in tropical regions points to two main drivers, agriculture and logging. The common thread is roads that provide access to these resources and deliver them to market. The same is true for petroleum exploration and production, though, according to Baynard:

Petroleum exploration and production also causes changes to land cover, but some practices create less disturbance than others. lack of attention in land use and land cover change literature.”

His study finds that petroleum exploration, pushed by government policies to boost oil production in response to recent high prices (2001-2005), was the primary driver of observed land use change in connection with two large oil development projects in Venezuela’s heavy oil belt. “The extraction of natural resources produces marked impacts on the landscape,” he says.



Carlos F. Mena of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Alisson F. Barbieri of the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil, also studied the direct land use change impacts of oil exploration and development in a paper titled “Pressure on the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve: Development and Land Use/Cover Change in the Northern Ecuadorian Amazon”:

"We find that LULC patterns within and adjacent to the Reserve are influenced by (1) changes in land tenure regimes in newly classified Patrimony Forest, (2) petroleum exploration and production, (3) indigenous communities location, characteristics, and integration to the market economy, and (4) settlement patterns and household characteristics of colonists.”