Abstract

Estimating Land Disturbance Associated with Energy Development Using GIS
Track: Water Resources
Author(s): Susan Buto

The Upper Colorado River Basin (UCRB) encompasses parts of Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico and in many areas is underlain by a thick sequence of Mesozoic marine and lacustrine formations that are a significant source of salinity to water resources in the basin. The on-going dissolution of these salt-bearing minerals by water in the UCRB is an important concern to water-users. The past decade has seen an increased focus on energy development throughout the West and in the UCRB raising concerns of potentially increased salinity loads in the UCRB. The focus of this project is to develop a GIS-based method for estimating land disturbance in the UCRB due to energy development. The resulting land surface disturbance data set will be integrated with other basin characteristic data sets for the UCRB and used in the statistical modeling of the relation of dissolved solids with land surface disturbance.

Susan Buto
U.S. Geological Survey
2329 Orton Circle
West Valley City , Utah 84119
United States
Phone: 801-908-5044
E-mail: sbuto@usgs.gov