The Chihuahuan Desert is an arid bioregion in the southwestern U.S. that provides important ecosystem services such as climate regulation, raw materials and cultural services. With the development of high-volume hydrofracturing technology, oil and gas drilling has increased rapidly in the Permian Basin, which partially overlaps the Chihuahuan Desert. Thus, this area has become one of the fastest growing unconventional oil and gas (UOG) regions in the U.S. This activity is also threatening to expand outside the traditional boundaries of the Permian Basin into other parts of the Chihuahuan Desert that may be particularly valuable for ecosystem services. In this study, we calculated the amount of loss and fragmentation for specific habitats in this bioregion to acquire estimates of land-use changes and the associated ecosystem services costs from UOG development. Using Google Earth Pro satellite imagery and measuring tools, we randomly selected 20 USGS quadrangles in which to hand-draw polygons around perimeters of habitat either converted to or fragmented by UOG infrastructure. Then we multiplied the area of impacted habitat by recently published ecosystem services values for the Chihuahuan Desert to get estimated annual ecosystem services costs.
Results/Conclusions
We found that 250,000 Ha of land have been fully converted or modified by UOG, with shrubland (88%) and grassland (12%) habitats showing the most impact. Almost 5 million hectares have been highly fragmented, making up 27% of the total area of the U.S. Chihuahuan Desert. These land-use changes translate to current annual estimated ecosystem services costs of about 181 million USD. These costs are expected to expand rapidly within currently impacted areas, and also enter new areas that have not seen ecosystems services losses yet. We conclude that these costs represent economic losses that should be considered in a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis when new UOG development is under consideration.