Exploring Societal Problems with Data: Assessing Impacts on Water Quality with the Shale Network Database

Abstract:

All communities must maintain the quality of their water resources at the same time that they use land for a range of other anthropogenic activities. If such activities pollute drinking water or harm ecosystems, human health can be deleteriously impacted over long periods of time. However, even though many water quality data are measured worldwide, it is often difficult to find sufficient data to assess problems at the spatial scale needed. This is especially true when land use includes impact-causing activities such as mining, energy exploitation, road use, agriculture, and urbanization dispersed across a large region. We have been collating groundwater and surface water quality data for hydrocarbon basins. We started with the basin that was first exploited for coal, oil, and gas in the United States (i.e., the Appalachian Basin). These data are being published in the Shale Network database ( https://doi.org/10.4211/his-data-shalenetwork). To assess the quality of the data in our Shale Network database requires repeated checking and cross comparisons. Regardless, problems in data quality are still found once we explore the data with regression analysis and spatial analysis tools. Typically, we must use the data and assess it with spatial and machine learning to find (and fix) problems in the data quality. Beyond data quality, the value of the data is further enhanced by publication in publicly accessible data repositories. This invites other investigators to use the dataset. Finally, we design annual workshops to foster dialogue among scientists and nonscientists in the Basin. Workshops focus on data related to environmental problems. The most important metrics that define the utility of our data are thus i) data quality, ii) usefulness in addressing societal problems, iii) accessibility to other researchers, iv) capacity to generate dialogue among scientific and nonscientific communities.