Land

Learn about land impacts of the oil and gas industry through FracTracker articles, maps, and imagery.

Oil and Gas Land Impacts

The articles and maps below deal in part with impacts of oil and gas development on land use including for agriculture, public land, watersheds, forests, private property, etc.

Image Gallery

Explore our gallery of images related to energy exploration, extraction, and production.

Donny Nelson harvesting his field at his farm near Keene, North Dakota. Photo by David Nix 2015

Fertilizer Production in the United States: How Big Ag is Fossil Fueled

November 14, 2023

Producing nitrogen fertilizer for US cropland depends on cheap and unfettered access to natural gas to fuel the industrial chemical manufacturing process for synthesizing ammonia.

How Spills, Holes, and Cracks Release Fracking Chemicals Into the Environment

August 31, 2023

FracTracker dives into how toxic fracking chemicals and waste products enter our environment through accidents, spills, and equipment failures, and the impact on Pennsylvania communities.

Stacked pipes used in constructing oil and gas pipelines

A Contentious Landscape of Pipeline Build-outs in the Eastern US

November 30, 2022

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In this article, we’ll feature four contentious pipeline build-outs in the Eastern United States, show ways in which those pipelines impact natural and human communities, and provide examples of how environmental advocates have challenged these projects, with varying degrees of success.

Coursing Through Gasland: A Digital Atlas Exploring Natural Gas Development in the Towanda Creek Watershed

November 23, 2022

This digital atlas exploring natural gas development in the Towanda Creek watershed is the fourth in a series of FracTracker Alliance watershed impact analyses in the Susquehanna River Basin.

Abandoned Infrastructure in Keene, North Dakota. Photo by David Nix.

Carbon Capture and Storage: Developments in the Law of Pore Space in North Dakota

August 31, 2022

The interplay between the rights of the owner of the surface estate and the rights of the mineral estate have recently become the subject of both legislation and litigation as the use of subsurface pore space by various energy industries has developed at an increasingly rapid pace in North Dakota.